MorphBlog

A New Day, And MorphBlog, Dawns

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:00:00 +0000

Well, my friends, you can kiss this iteration of the MorphBlog goodbye. Google has been great to me, but I decided to move on with some homegrown WordPress and CSS I cooked up. From now on, all your blogs needs will be met here:

MORPHBLOG: don't fear change. change fear.
http://www.morphizm.com/css

For those of you who are feeding us into a reader of some sort, point your RSS and ATOM junkies this way going forward:

MorphBlog RSS FEED
http://morphizm.com/css/wp-rss.php
MorhBlog ATOM FEED
http://morphizm.com/css/wp-atom.php

For more information, go to the new MorphBlog Feeds page, where you can get the full news, plus locations for Morphizm's presence on YouTube, Imeem, Twitter and more.

Lightning Strikes? Get Used to Them.

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:34:00 +0000

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

Post Up: Pinback, Dark Star, Breakfast Club

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 03:31:00 +0000

Greetings, Morphizm fans. It's been a long day at Wired, but I've got goodies. Some of them are named Pinback.

Digg's Kevin Rose Digs Pinback, Knife, More
Los Angeles radio staple KCRW has lately handed over its studio to a variety of all-stars from entertainment and culture for the Guest DJ Project. On Wednesday, it was Digg's turn to mix it up: Kevin Rose teamed up with DJ Raul Campos to spin five tunes that make life easier while programming a social networking phenomenon... MORE @ WIRED

Video: Speaking of Pinback, Dark Star and The Breakfast Club...
The San Diego duo has been around for years making addictive, hypnotic laptop pop, hopscotching from sci-fi classic to teen-angst soap without missing a backbeat.

Pinback originally formed around the turn of the 21st century, when bassist Zach Smith's other criminally underrated band Three Mile Pilot fragmented under the pressure of major-label headaches and interpersonal drama. The drama also caused 3MP's singer Pall Jenkins and pianist Tobias Nathaniel to create Black Heart Procession.

Rob Crow, on leave from one of his hundred other bands, including Heavy Vegetable, Thingy, Optigonally Yours and many more (including the riotous Goblin Cock), signed on with Smith shortly thereafter. Since then, the two turned out a series of compelling full-length efforts and EPs created in the comfort of their own homes and garages... MORE @ WIRED

Post Up: What Is(n't) Shoegaze?

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 07:41:00 +0000

[I ponder loud thoughts, and hopefully kill crappy terminology, for my homeys at Wired. Long live the unclassifiable.]

Post Up: What Is(n't) Shoegaze?
"Shoegaze is a dumb term made up by clueless NME idiots," argues Mogwai's Stuart Brathwaite, a My Bloody Valentine fan as well as a friend of its architect Kevin Shields. "It's pretty demeaning as well. If someone called us shoegazers, I'd be pretty unhappy."

For good reason. During the late '80s and early '90s, the term reductively compressed the dense feedback, droning riffage and ethereal soundtracking into slang and slag, especially in the British press. No doubt, its employ was a byproduct of the British press having fallen in love with the derivative Britpop of Oasis, as much as America had fallen in love with the derivative metal of grunge.

But in the end, it was used to describe bands like My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins, Swervedriver and pretty much anyone else, like drone minimalists Spacemen 3, who didn't fall into the comfortable confines of easily classifiable music... MORE @ WIRED

The Real Nigerian Nightmare

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 01:14:00 +0000

[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

Post Up: HarcoDarko, RadioLasers, Who?

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 01:41:00 +0000

[Checking in from the static haze, Morphizm diehards. I've been hard at work for Wired and more, so let's share, shall we?]

Ed Harcourt Merges Glass and Drone For Donnie Darko Sequel
Ed Harcourt's recently released The Beautiful Lie is a far cry from his early work. Its emotional piano balladry sounds little like the experimental exercises found on Here Be Monsters or Maplewood. But his sonic diversity will come in handy when he tackles the film score for S. Darko, the sequel to the surprisingly successful indie sci-fi classic Donnie Darko.

Video: Radiohead Ditches Cameras, Activates Lasers
"So here we are in our lovely Florida cul-de-sac," Zoo Films director of photography Von Thomas explains. "We are scanning the geometry of [the] houses that we are going to vaporize."

The Who: Less Influential Than Def Leppard?
In a taping for VH1 on Saturday in Los Angeles, everyone from Pearl Jam, Tenacious D and Flaming Lips to X-Files spook David Duchovny, Office nerd Rainn Wilson and more showed up to fete The Who. The occasion was the taping of VH1 Rock Honors, a show that supposedly bows down to the rock icons that shaped music as we know it.

Post Up: Give Peace a Price Tag

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 02:12:00 +0000

I spiel onward for Wired for money. For love, I learn CSS. It goes slowly.

Give Peace a Price Tag
Almost four decades ago, John Lennon and Yoko Ono piled Timothy Leary, Petula Clark, Dick Gregory, Allen Ginsberg, Tommy Smothers and many more into a Bed-In in a Montreal hotel room and recorded what may be the most famous protest song of all time using nothing but four mikes and an Ampex four-track. On Thursday, the hand-written lyrics to that immortal song, "Give Peace a Chance," were auctioned off by Christie's for the tidy sum of $833,654.

Money may not be ably to buy you love, but evidently it can buy you peace. Scratch that: It can buy you love too... MORE @ WIRED

Disaster Capitalism's Extortion State

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 07:38:00 +0000

[Once again, we hand the floor to longtime Morphizm contributor Naomi Klein, who knows her way around a game theory. Or two. Especially the one that profits off either side of reconstruction.]

Disaster Capitalism: State of Extortion
by Naomi Klein
Once oil passed $140 a barrel, even the most rabidly right-wing media hosts had to prove their populist cred by devoting a portion of every show to bashing Big Oil. Some have gone so far as to invite me on for a friendly chat about an insidious new phenomenon: “disaster capitalism.” It usually goes well—until it doesn’t.

For instance, “independent conservative” radio host Jerry Doyle and I were having a perfectly amiable conversation about sleazy insurance companies and inept politicians when this happened: “I think I have a quick way to bring the prices down,” Doyle announced. “We’ve invested $650 billion to liberate a nation of 25 million people. Shouldn’t we just demand that they give us oil? There should be tankers after tankers backed up like a traffic jam getting into the Lincoln Tunnel, the Stinkin’ Lincoln, at rush hour with thank-you notes from the Iraqi government…. Why don’t we just take the oil? We’ve invested it liberating a country. I can have the problem solved of gas prices coming down in ten days, not ten years.”

There were a couple of problems with Doyle’s plan, of course. The first was that he was describing the biggest stickup in world history. The second, that he was too late: “We” are already heisting Iraq’s oil, or at least are on the cusp of doing so.

It’s been ten months since the publication of my book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, in which I argue that today’s preferred method of reshaping the world in the interest of multi-national corporations is to systematically exploit the state of fear and disorientation that accompanies moments of great shock and crisis. With the globe being rocked by multiple shocks, this seems like a good time to see how and where the strategy is being applied.

And the disaster capitalists have been busy—from private firefighters already on the scene in Northern California’s wildfires, to land grabs in cyclone-hit Burma, to the housing bill making its way through Congress. The bill contains little in the way of affordable housing, shifts the burden of mortgage default to taxpayers and makes sure that the banks that made bad loans get some payouts. No wonder it is known in the hallways of Congress as “The Credit Suisse Plan,” after one of the banks that generously proposed it.

Iraq Disaster: We Broke It, We (Just) Bought It

But these cases of disaster capitalism are amateurish compared with what is unfolding at Iraq’s oil ministry. It started with no-bid service contracts announced for ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP and Total (they have yet to be signed but are still on course). Paying multinationals for their technical expertise is not unusual. What is odd is that such contracts almost invariably go to oil service companies—not to the oil majors, whose work is exploring, producing and owning-carbon wealth. As London-based oil expert Greg Muttitt points out, the contracts make sense only in the context of reports that the oil majors have insisted on the right of first refusal on subsequent contracts handed out to manage and produce Iraq’s oil fields. In other words, other companies will be free to bid on those future contracts, but these companies will win.

One week after the no-bid service deals were announced, the world caught its first glimpse of the real prize. After years of back-room arm-twisting, Iraq is officially flinging open six of its major oil fields, accounting for around half of its known reserves, to foreign investors. According to Iraq’s oil minister, the long-term contracts will be signed within a year. While ostensibly under control of the Iraq National Oil Company, foreign firms will keep 75 percent of the value of the contracts, leaving just 25 percent for their Iraqi partners.

That kind of ratio is unheard of in oil-rich Arab and Persian states, where achieving majority national control over oil was the defining victory of anti-colonial struggles. According to Muttitt, the assumption until now was that foreign multinationals would be brought in to develop brand-new fields in Iraq—not to take over ones that are already in production and therefore require minimal technical support. “The policy was always to allocate these fields to the Iraq National Oil Company,” he told me. This is a total reversal of that policy, giving INOC a mere 25 percent instead of the planned 100 percent.

So what makes such lousy deals possible in Iraq, which has already suffered so much? Ironically, it is Iraq’s suffering—its never-ending crisis—that is the rationale for an arrangement that threatens to drain its treasury of its main source of revenue. The logic goes like this: Iraq’s oil industry needs foreign expertise because years of punishing sanctions starved it of new technology and the invasion and continuing violence degraded it further. And Iraq urgently needs to start producing more oil. Why? Again because of the war. The country is shattered, and the billions handed out in no-bid contracts to Western firms have failed to rebuild the country. And that’s where the new no-bid contracts come in: they will raise more money, but Iraq has become such a treacherous place that the oil majors must be induced to take the risk of investing. Thus the invasion of Iraq neatly creates the argument for its subsequent pillage.

Several of the architects of the Iraq War no longer even bother to deny that oil was a major motivator. On National Public Radio’s To the Point, Fadhil Chalabi, one of the primary Iraqi advisers to the Bush Administration in the lead-up to the invasion, recently described the war as “a strategic move on the part of the United States of America and the UK to have a military presence in the Gulf in order to secure [oil] supplies in the future.” Chalabi, who served as Iraq’s oil under-secretary and met with the oil majors before the invasion, described this as “a primary objective.”

Invading countries to seize their natural resources is illegal under the Geneva Conventions. That means that the huge task of rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure—including its oil infrastructure—is the financial responsibility of Iraq’s invaders. They should be forced to pay reparations. (Recall that Saddam Hussein’s regime paid $9 billion to Kuwait in reparations for its 1990 invasion.) Instead, Iraq is being forced to sell 75 percent of its national patrimony to pay the bills for its own illegal invasion and occupation.

Oil Price Shock: Give Us the Arctic or Never Drive Again

Iraq isn’t the only country in the midst of an oil-related stickup. The Bush Administration is busily using a related crisis—the soaring price of fuel—to revive its dream of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). And of drilling offshore. And in the rock-solid shale of the Green River Basin. “Congress must face a hard reality,” said George W. Bush on June 18. “Unless members are willing to accept gas prices at today’s painful levels—or even higher—our nation must produce more oil.”

This is the President as Extortionist in Chief, with gas nozzle pointed to the head of his hostage—which happens to be the entire country. Give me ANWR, or everyone has to spend their summer vacations in the backyard. A final stickup from the cowboy President.

Despite the Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less bumper stickers, drilling in ANWR would have little discernible impact on actual global oil supplies, as its advocates well know. The argument that it could nonetheless bring down oil prices is based not on hard economics but on market psychoanalysis: drilling would “send a message” to the oil traders that more oil is on the way, which would cause them to start betting down the price.

Two points follow from this approach. First, trying to psych out hyperactive commodity traders is what passes for governing in the Bush era, even in the midst of a national emergency. Second, it will never work. If there is one thing we can predict from the oil market’s recent behavior, it is that the price is going to keep going up regardless of what new supplies are announced.

Take the massive oil boom under way in Alberta’s notorious tar sands. The tar sands (sometimes called the oil sands) have the same things going for them as Bush’s proposed drill sites: they are nearby and perfectly secure, since the North American Free Trade Agreement contains a provision barring Canada from cutting off supply to the United States. And with little fanfare, oil from this largely untapped source has been pouring into the market, so much so that Canada is now the largest supplier of oil to the United States, surpassing Saudi Arabia. Between 2005 and 2007, Canada increased its exports to the States by almost 100 million barrels. Yet despite this significant increase in secure supplies, oil prices have been going up the entire time.

What is driving the ANWR push is not facts but pure shock doctrine strategy—the oil crisis has created the conditions in which it is possible to sell a previously unsellable (but highly profitable) policy.

Food Price Shock: Genetic Modification or Starvation

Intimately connected to the price of oil is the global food crisis. Not only do high gas prices drive up food costs but the boom in agrofuels has blurred the line between food and fuel, pushing food growers off their land and encouraging rampant speculation. Several Latin American countries have been pushing to re-examine the push for agrofuels and to have food recognized as a human right, not a mere commodity. United States Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte has other ideas. In the same speech touting the US commitment to emergency food aid, he called on countries to lower their “export restrictions and high tariffs” and eliminate “barriers to use of innovative plant and animal production technologies, including biotechnology.” This was an admittedly more subtle stickup, but the message was clear: impoverished countries had better crack open their agricultural markets to American products and genetically modified seeds, or they could risk having their aid cut off.

Genetically modified crops have emerged as the cure-all for the food crisis, at least according to the World Bank, the European Commission president (time to “bite the bullet”) and Prime Minister of Britain Gordon Brown. And, of course, the agribusiness companies. “You cannot today feed the world without genetically modified organisms,” Peter Brabeck, chairman of Nestlé, told the Financial Times recently. The problem with this argument, at least for now, is that there is no evidence that GMOs increase crop yields, and they often decrease them.

But even if there was a simple key to solving the global food crisis, would we really want it in the hands of the Nestlés and Monsantos? What would it cost us to use it? In recent months Monsanto, Syngenta and BASF have been frenetically buying up patents on so-called “climate ready” seeds—plants that can grow in earth parched from drought and salinated from flooding.

In other words, plants built to survive a future of climate chaos. We already know the lengths Monsanto will go to protect its intellectual property, spying on and suing farmers who dare to save their seeds from one year to the next. We have seen patented AIDS medications fail to treat millions in sub-Saharan Africa. Why would patented “climate ready” crops be any different?

Meanwhile, amid all the talk of exciting new genetic and drilling technologies, the Bush Administration announced a moratorium of up to two years on new solar energy projects on federal lands—due, apparently, to environmental concerns. This is the final frontier for disaster capitalism. Our leaders are failing to invest in technology that will actually prevent a future of climate chaos, choosing instead to work hand in hand with those plotting innovative schemes to profit from the mayhem.

Privatizing Iraq’s oil, ensuring global dominance for genetically modified crops, lowering the last of the trade barriers and opening the last of the wildlife refuges… Not so long ago, those goals were pursued through polite trade agreements, under the benign pseudonym “globalization.” Now this discredited agenda is forced to ride on the backs of serial crises, selling itself as lifesaving medicine for a world in pain.

*This column was first published in The Nation*

The House I Live In

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 05:30:00 +0000

[Morphizm pal and investigative muckraker Greg Palast checks in with a self-conscious Fourth of July spiel. Patriots might want to click on another site...now!]

The House I Live In
America is a nation of losers. It’s the best thing about us. We're the dregs, what the rest of the world barfed up and threw on our shores.

John Kennedy said we are "a nation of immigrants." That's the sanitized phrase. We are, in fact, a nation of refugees, who, despite the bastards in white sheets and the know-nothings in Congress, have held open the Golden Door to a dark planet. We are not imperialists and that’s why Bush lies and Cheney lies and, yes, the Clintons lied.
Winston Churchill didn’t lie to the Brits about their empire: He said, These lands belong to the Crown, we own'm and we’ll squeeze the value from them. "Imperialism," as Karl Marx complained, was a good word in Britain, a word that got you elected in Europe until too recently.

Ignore the fey university hideouts of Europe. Go to Vietnam or to Brazil or to Morocco or to Tibet and you’ll ?nd the same thing: America's music, America's freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of spirit and the heartfelt friendship of Americans for others have made the USA truly “the light unto the nations.” Americans are not liked worldwide, but loved-sometimes I ?nd that weird, but it’s true-and that drives Osama to bombs and madness.

We are a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the cause that all men and women are created equal. It’s silly and precious to point out that these ideals have been mangled, abused, ignored and monstered by those with plans to make us an empire. We know that.

America is indeed exceptional. That's not a boast, that’s a job we have to do. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson burdened us with that exceptionalism in crafting the most important international law signed up until the Geneva Convention: The Alien Torts Act, in which the USA takes onto itself the right to bring civil penalties against any act of torture, political murder and piracy that occurs anywhere in the world. It is now being used in suits brought against Chevron Oil in Ecuador and against IBM for the death of slave laborers in Nazi Germany.

Damn right America is exceptional. It is America that de?antly walked out of the ?rst “world trade organization,” known as the British Empire, announcing, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and are ENDOWED BY THE CREATOR with INALIENABLE rights, and AMONG THESE are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Now, think about that. These rights don’t come from Congress or Kings or Soviets, they come from The Creator, that is, we are born free-and “we” are Sri Lankans as much as Minnesotans. Our rights are “INALIENABLE”: no one, NO ONE, may take them away, not the Ayatollahs of Tehran or Generalissimo Negroponte at the Department of Homeland Security or the kill-o-crats in Baghdad pre- or post- Saddam.
Will the snarling closet imperialists try to turn America from its cause and soul? Damn right they will. That’s why two U.S. military lawyers resigned from their posts at the Guantánamo prison camp. They wouldn’t put up with Bush-niks tearing up their Constitution. ("We the people" own it, not "them the Republicans.") In Iran, these two guys would have been shot, in Britain arrested. In America, Bush fears them-that their story would come out-as it did. Only in America could that happen.

No question, the USA holds itself exempt from the legal standards of this world-which are execrable. Whose standard should we adopt? China’s torture standard? Britain’s Secrecy Act as a standard? Switzerland’s Nazi-money-protection standard?

Only in America would a Lyndon Johnson order federal troops to protect Black school kids' right to attend class. You don’t have to tell me that Johnson then ordered the slaughter of three million Vietnamese-I know, I went to jail to oppose it. But go to Vietnam today and ask what people they most admire? Mention Russians, they laugh; mention Chinese, they may hit you; mention Americans and they say (to my astonishment, I’ll admit), “We love Americans.”

They don’t love Bush. That’s because George Bush is not an American. Look, I didn’t think much of Bill Clinton, and he dropped into some of the worst quasi-imperial habits of the New World Trade Order. But Clinton was also more popular worldwide than the pope and pizza combined because he represented that American sense of giving- a-shit, empathy and sincere friendship which are hallmarks of America’s Manifest Destiny.

Yes, America does have a Manifest Destiny-to Let Freedom Ring-which the evil and greedy and pernicious would twist into a grab for land and resources and ethnic cleansing. And so the Manifest Destiny of the journalists in our shitty little of ?ces in New York and London is to expose these motherfuckers.

Ronald Reagan said, "America is the shining city on the hill." And he hated it, doing his best to turn it into a dark Calcutta of the helpless. And when that didn’t work, George II tried to drown us in the Mississippi.

Go back to Taos, New Mexico, Voting Precinct 13. What you’ll ?nd there is Pueblo Native war veterans who raise the ?ag every day and will ?ght and die for it knowing full well that the ?ght must also be taken to the pueblo’s racially biased voting booths.

Howard Zinn, a shining historian on our hill, reminds us, "It should be understood that the children of Iraq, of China, and of Africa, children everywhere in the world, have the same right to life as American children."

Damn right, they do. That’s what Jefferson meant by "inalienable."

And they won’t get their rights to life and liberty from Osama's Caliphate of oil states or China’s money-crazed "Communism" nor half of Africa’s neo-colonial presidential Draculas or the puppet princes installed today in Iraq by George Bush.

Bush is so far away from his refugee loser roots that he just doesn’t get what it is to be American. So he steals the one thing that every American is handed off the boat: a chance. When they take away your Social Security and overtime and tell you sleeper cells are sleeping under your staircase, you don't take a chance, you lose your chance, and the land of opportunity becomes a landscape of fear and suspicion, an armed madhouse.

You want to say that George Bush is an evil sonovabitch? I’d go further: he’s Un-American.

And that’s why he lost the election. Twice.

The Fourth Is Over? Let's Kill Iran!

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:07:00 +0000

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.

Happy Birthday, Morphizm!

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 20:48:00 +0000

Seven years ago, I started a crappy site that turned into a career in journalism. From early interviews with Jello, Viggo and Fugazi to today's CSS overhaul, still in progress, it's been a blast. I had no idea that buying and coding your own site could lead to gigs writing for Wired, Huffington Post, Salon, AlterNet, Rolling Stone and more, but here I am. Thanks, Morphizm.

So, what comes next? We're ramping up a CSS redesign that will feature much simpler navigation and rich media content. We'll also have a slew of independent blogs from our usual cast of characters, including Greg Palast, Naomi Klein, Tom McNichol and many more. We'll have a dedicated video show, radio station, store and resources for those looking to recreate their internet experience and stay informed. As always, we'll offer an alternative to the stoopid media out there, and bring you uncomfortable but much-needed clarity on the world-at-large. Later on, we'll have books and more productions as well. By the end of 2008, you might not recognize Morphizm.

But we will recognize you. Thanks for reading these last seven years. Here's to 700 more.

Is Google Evil For The Environment?

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:20:00 +0000

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

Golden Animals Free Yr Mind

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:30:00 +0000

More musical spiel for Metromix! This one is as groovy as Jim Morrison's skull:

Golden Animals
Free Yr Mind and Win a Pony
As an experimental mash of yesteryear's sonic signatures and today's technological upgrades, Golden Animals' smoky effort is a timeless pleasure. Deep-fried stomps like "Queen Mary (The Flop)" could have easily come off of Elvis' "Jailhouse Rock," except when the near-metal riffage pops in for a nice surprise. The country lean of "Ride Easy" feels like Johnny Cash jumped out a window and landed on Pavement. The blue bounce of "Steady Roller" could have crept out of Nick Cave or Alejandro Escovedo's underwear drawer, if it wasn't hiding out with the Soledad Brothers. There's a lot going on here, is what we’re saying, but a degree in pop music history isn't necessary if you just want to lie back and let Golden Animals retrofitted Americana roll over you like a runaway train. Hop the boxcar, bums! MORE @ METROMIX

HuffPosted! Great Depression Goes Viral

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 01:48:00 +0000

Hey pals, my post on our Ponzi economy's return to the Great Depression has landed on the fine pages of The Huffington Post. Load up the guns and comment at will! The more, the better. Just like money.

The Great Depression Goes Viral
The first thing we need to admit to ourselves is that the war and the economy are the same issue, not separate ones. The next thing we need to to is unplug ourselves from the chatter, and plan for the future. Which means turning off Fox, CNN, MSNBC or talk radio, if only those programs that bypass research for retardation. Or redundancy, if you are offended by the metaphor. The point is the point, which is a tautological way of saying you are wasting your time if you are getting your news from people who are not only giving you not just their opinion, but the worst possible opinion available in
contemporary media... MORE @ MORPHIZM

Alkaline Trio Are Getting Old

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 01:35:00 +0000

July is here. Bring the heat! Let's start with a spiel for Metromix:

Alkaline Trio
Agony & Irony
Like their peers in Green Day, another similarly engineered punk and pop crossover threesome, Alkaline Trio have turned over a decade's worth of work into a comfortable career of making noise and friends. They even made the jump to a major label, having left Vagrant and landed at Epic, and starred on teen television drama The Hills... MORE @ METROMIX

I Called It! The Great Depression

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 02:33:00 +0000

Last July, I took a novice's look at hedge funds, housing, gambling and America's ass-backwards foreign policy and declared what I thought to be the obvious. The spiel landed on Alternet in the form of a supposedly sensational article called The Crash of 1929: Are We on the Verge of a Repeat? I thought it was a hoot. Others thought I was high.

But it ended up being obvious. June gloom just killed off the second quarter of 2008, and the Great Depression is finally going viral in the mainstream media. CNN Money's closing report on today's trading dropped it three times, including once in the subheadline. And they're not alone either. The economy has become the top election issue of the year, and chatterheads like Jim Cramer and Lawrence Kudlow are looking worse while doom prophets like Naomi Klein and James Kunstler are looking cooler by the day.

Which totally rules: The more people unplug from the Kool-Aid machine, the faster we can get past disaster capitalism and onto the next stage in our economic evolution, which is alternative energy. I say economic evolution, but it might as well be our salvation. If we don't get off gas fast, we're headed to a junkie's end. Ever seen one? Not pretty.

The first thing we need to admit to ourselves is that the war and the economy are the same issue, not separate ones. The next thing we need to to is unplug ourselves from the chatter, and plan for the future. Which means turning off Fox, CNN, MSNBC or talk radio, if only those programs that bypass research for retardation. Or redundancy, if you are offended by the metaphor. The point is the point, which is a tautological way of saying you are wasting your time if you are getting your news from people who are not only giving you not just their opinion, but the worst possible opinion available in contemporary media.

See the games for what they are, and help those around you see them as well. We're trillions in the hole since Bush took office. Let's make sure the next president knows his way around a game theory, or two.

Post Up! Prescrips: Rock's New Coke and Heroin?

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 07:21:00 +0000

Man, the spring cleaning is almost done. July to December are going to look so different, once these piles are decimated. Speaking of decimated, I recently posted a heads-up at Wired on Aerosmith, rehab and why prescription meds are the new heroin:

Prescription Drugs: Rock's New Coke and Heroin?
Aerosmith screamer Steven Tyler was once the poster boy for drug addiction in the music biz. In fact, Tyler and Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry were known as the "Toxic Twins" for their heroin and sundry other habits. But Tyler has a new drug, and this time it's over-the-counter.

While promoting the release of Guitar Hero: Aerosmith at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York on Friday, Tyler told the Associated Press that he recently checked back into rehab not to kick heroin or coke, but prescription meds and sleep aids. After undergoing surgery and physical therapy on his foot, Tyler couldn't hack the pain and admitted himself into a facility for help... MORE @ WIRED

The Watson Twins Are Hot

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 01:54:00 +0000

[They backed up Jenny Lewis, but they sing better. My thoughts on the twin sirens went up recently on Metromix. -ST]

The Watson Twins
Fire Songs
Kentucky country chanteuses turned California indie stars, identical twins Chandra and Leigh Watson scratched the indie rock surface backing up Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis on her solo effort "Rabbit Fur Coat," while simultaneously releasing their 2006 debut EP "Southern Manners." That double-shot set the table for this pitch-perfect full-length, as did a stint opening for Magnolia Electric Co. and signing to venerable label Vanguard... MORE @ METROMIX

Exxon Drills Alaska In The Ass

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:42:00 +0000

[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.

Obama’s Chicago Boys

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 01:05:00 +0000

[Naomi Klein sent this Morphizm's way last week, but it got lost in the redesign. Let's hope Obama doesn't get lost in the woods. -- ST]

Obama's Chicago Boys
[by Naomi Klein]
Barack Obama waited just three days after Hillary Clinton pulled out of the race to declare, on CNBC, “Look. I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market.”

Demonstrating that this is no mere spring fling, he has appointed 37-year-old Jason Furman to head his economic policy team. Furman is one of Wal-Mart’s most prominent defenders, anointing the company a “progressive success story.” On the campaign trail, Obama blasted Clinton for sitting on the Wal-Mart board and pledged, “I won’t shop there.” For Furman, however, it’s Wal-Mart’s critics who are the real threat: the “efforts to get Wal-Mart to raise its wages and benefits” are creating “collateral damage” that is “way too enormous and damaging to working people and the economy more broadly for me to sit by idly and sing ‘Kum-Ba-Ya’ in the interests of progressive harmony.”

Obama’s love of markets and his desire for “change” are not inherently incompatible. “The market has gotten out of balance,” he says, and it most certainly has. Many trace this profound imbalance back to the ideas of Milton Friedman, who launched a counter-revolution against the New Deal from his perch at the University of Chicago economics department. And here there are more problems, because Obama—who taught law at the University of Chicago for a decade—is thoroughly embedded in the mindset known as the Chicago School.

He chose as his chief economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist on the left side of a spectrum that stops at the center-right. Goolsbee, unlike his more Friedmanite colleagues, sees inequality as a problem. His primary solution, however, is more education—a line you can also get from Alan Greenspan. In their hometown, Goolsbee has been eager to link Obama to the Chicago School. “If you look at his platform, at his advisers, at his temperament, the guy’s got a healthy respect for markets,” he told Chicago magazine. “It’s in the ethos of the [University of Chicago], which is something different from saying he is laissez-faire.”

Another of Obama’s Chicago fans is 39-year-old billionaire Kenneth Griffin, CEO of the hedge fund Citadel Investment Group. Griffin, who gave the maximum allowable donation to Obama, is something of a poster boy for an unbalanced economy. He got married at Versailles and had the after-party at Marie Antoinette’s vacation spot (Cirque du Soleil performed)—and he is one of the staunchest opponents of closing the hedge fund tax loophole. While Obama talks about toughening trade rules with China, Griffin has been bending the few barriers that do exist. Despite sanctions prohibiting the sale of police equipment to China, Citadel has been pouring money into controversial China-based security companies that are putting the local population under unprecedented levels of surveillance.

Now is the time to worry about Obama’s Chicago Boys and their commitment to fending off serious attempts at regulation. It was in the two and a half months between winning the 1992 election and being sworn into office that Bill Clinton did a U-turn on the economy. He had campaigned promising to revise NAFTA, adding labor and environmental provisions and to invest in social programs. But two weeks before his inauguration, he met with then Goldman Sachs chief Robert Rubin, who convinced him of the urgency of embracing austerity and more liberalization. Rubin told PBS, “President Clinton actually made the decision before he stepped into the Oval Office, during the transition, on what was a dramatic change in economic policy.”

Furman, a leading disciple of Rubin, was chosen to head the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project, the think tank Rubin helped found to argue for reforming, rather than abandoning, the free trade agenda. Add to that Goolsbee’s February meeting with Canadian consulate officials, who left with the distinct impression that they had been instructed not to take Obama’s anti-NAFTA campaigning seriously, and there is every reason for concern about a replay of 1993.

The irony is that there is absolutely no reason for this backsliding. The movement launched by Friedman, introduced by Ronald Reagan and entrenched under Clinton, faces a profound legitimacy crisis around the world. Nowhere is this more evident than at the University of Chicago itself. In mid-May, when university president Robert Zimmer announced the creation of a $200 million Milton Friedman Institute, an economic research center devoted to continuing and augmenting the Friedman legacy, a controversy erupted. More than 100 faculty members signed a letter of protest. “The effects of the neoliberal global order that has been put in place in recent decades, strongly buttressed by the Chicago School of Economics, have by no means been unequivocally positive,” the letter states. “Many would argue that they have been negative for much of the world’s population.”

When Friedman died in 2006, such bold critiques of his legacy were largely absent. The adoring memorials spoke only of grand achievement, with one of the more prominent appreciations appearing in the New York Times—written by Austan Goolsbee. Yet now, just two years later, Friedman’s name is seen as a liability even at his own alma mater. So why has Obama chosen this moment, when all illusions of a consensus have dropped away, to go Chicago retro?

The news is not all bad. Furman claims he will be drawing on the expertise of two Keynesian economists: Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute and James Galbraith, son of Friedman’s nemesis John Kenneth Galbraith. Our “current economic crisis,” Obama recently said, did not come from nowhere. It is “the logical conclusion of a tired and misguided philosophy that has dominated Washington for far too long.”

True enough. But before Obama can purge Washington of the scourge of Friedmanism, he has some ideological housecleaning of his own to do.

This column was first published in The Nation

RIP, George Carlin

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:46:00 +0000

For a person who talks all day long for money, I am at a loss for words over the death of George Carlin. He was a philosopher-king among posers. The fact that I cannot put my thoughts over his passing into words is ironic to the extreme, given that Carlin was a language specialist paid even more to talk all day.

I leave it here: George Carlin changed this world. For the better. He changed me, and almost everyone I respect. I was lucky enough to see him live, and that is enough.

Rest in peace, you loudmouth. Thanks for giving me balls.

Post Up: Dr. Sleepgood!

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 22:02:00 +0000

Greetings,Morphizm pals. Well, I'm days away from the Morphizm relaunch and living large in the hellhole Los Angeles on my own. Should be able to concentrate nicely, now that the fam is in an even bigger hellhole called Vegas. So why do I feel like going to sleep? Oh yeah, because I wrote this for Wired today:

Brain Drainer Puts Audience to Sleep With Music
Japanese neurologist Dr. Takuro Endo has made a nice career out of knocking people out. Recently, he tried it on a mass scale in Tokyo, in a show called "Dreams Kaimin." The result? A partial snooze... MORE @ WIRED

Post Up: Boston Celtics Victory Soundtrack

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 00:42:00 +0000

The NBA's 2008 season is finished The Lakers got what they deserved. So did the Celtics. I spiel for Wired!

Boston Celtics Victory Soundtrack
On Tuesday night, the Boston Celtics thoroughly kicked the Los Angeles Lakers' sorry asses by 39 points to win their 17th NBA championship. The defeat was so humiliating that Listening Post felt compelled to cobble together its second victory soundtrack. (The first, as some readers may remember, belonged to hoops fan and possible president Barack Obama.)

Although the Lakers' Kobe Bryant took home the NBA's MVP trophy at the outset of the playoffs, he caved into the Celtics home-court pressure and barely broke 22 points, while the rest of his team limped along in unison. The Celtics, meanwhile, played like their lives and reputations depended on it, and simply tore up Boston's storied parquet floor all night long.

In honor of their fine performance, Listening Post has assembled a series of songs directly or indirectly related to Boston and hoops. The playlist plus a song-by-song breakdown continues after the jump.

And no, there is no Boston on the playlist. Sorry, "More Than a Feeling" fans. We just couldn't go through with it... MORE @ WIRED

Tilly And The Wall Have An O

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 04:35:00 +0000

Wiped out, my friends, as you can tell by the hour of this post. But better late than never. Here's my review of Tilly and the Wall's O, which went up today on Metromix:

Tilly and the Wall
O
O is a skewed blast, something Phil Spector might have dreamt up after eating too much spicy food. The clumsy stomp of "Chandelier" sounds like it might have dropped off of Tom Waits’ plate, and "Dust Me Off" could have been the Go-Go's B-side Belinda Carlisle was too scared to show off. The shouts sparking the off-kilter rhythms and horns of "I Found You" turn the song's saccharine center into a steamrolling anthem. Even the winsome acoustic number "Tall Tall Grass" feels like a square peg in a round hole. From the first tune to the tap dance solos of the finale "Too Excited," O is an uncomfortable good time... MORE @ METROMIX

Post Up: Interview With The Dandy Warhols

noreply@blogger.com (MORPHIZM) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 21:25:00 +0000

Happy Monday, Morphizm pals! Yesterday, I posted a fun chat with Courtney Taylor-Taylor on his band's latest, weirdest effort for Wired:

Battlefield Earth: An Interview with The Dandy Warhols
From its early dates pounding out psychedelia and dream sonics to its later leanings into electro-pop with the help of Duran Duran, it's been hard to catch up with The Dandy Warhols. It might be that rare band that could use a retrospective, just to refresh the frame.

The group has achieved an escape velocity of sorts on its newest effort Earth to The Dandy Warhols, that is if one can get a lock on its trajectory. Like the band, the release is all over the map: Whether Dandy guru Courtney Taylor-Taylor is aping Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stone's "Miss You" on the recombined funk of "Welcome to the 3rd World" or disappearing into the digital haze of the head-tripping "Wasp in the Lotus," the mission objective seems invested in keeping listeners off-balance. And asking them to dance, if only in a circle sometimes.

More bravely, the band has embraced the digital age. In May, the quartet released Earth to The Dandy Warhols online as a subscription package laced with extras. The hard copy arrives in August, and Taylor-Taylor is still cool with that. "I'm not gonna give [CDs] up until I have to," he promises.

Listening Post caught up with the Taylor-Taylor, and his sense of humor, to rap about Earth, download-only releases and why the major labels slept on the digital music revolution and missed their chance at becoming overlords of the future... MORE @ WIRED