What wouldn't Clinton do to secure power?

From The Independent :

" ... Of course you have to make compromises to achieve power. But at some point, on some issues, you have to say – no, I can't. I can't execute this mentally disabled black guy. I can't plunge millions of kids into poverty. I can't still insist I was right to back the war in Iraq, when it has killed more than 650,000 Iraqis. The Clintons don't have that gagging reflex.

Instead, they chose to turn themselves into weathervanes, pointing whichever way the winds of mega-power blow them. This meant that on all the great issues of their time – global warming, spiralling inequality, the foolish "war on drugs" – the Clintons fed and fuelled the right. Hillary is following this approach to the letter. While promising in public to "take on the oil companies, the pharmaceutical companies", she is in fact shovelling more of their cash into her campaign than any other candidate, Democrat or Republican. Fortune magazine recently ran an adoring cover story calling her "the candidate of business".

Why did it take us so long to see them for what they are? Partly, it is because the Clintons were blessed with a parade of even greater grotesques as enemies. The right couldn't attack the Clintons on their genuine scandalous behaviour, because they supported it all: the executions, the abolition of benefits, the crackdowns. So they contrived nonsense scandals, like Whitewater and Monicagate. Today, many of them are serving up stale sexism against Hillary: right-wing host Tucker Carlson has announced, "There's something about her that feels castrating, overbearing and scary." ... "

The growing plight of those left homeless by the mortgage crisis in LA

Tent cities spring up in LA

Tibet Protests (BBC)

"I would not be surprised to see an emergency bank holiday announced. That hasn’t happened since Roosevelt."

So who is next? As advisers to Bear Stearns struggle to find a buyer or funding in the next 28 days, Wall Street, the City and the financial district in Tokyo were scrabbling to find out who is the most exposed to Bear Stearns, either through loans or trading positions.

Traders in all three centres were panicking even for those banks not directly exposed to Bear. They feared that the problems experienced at the stricken bank signalled that the credit crisis has deteriorated to a new level.

Yesterday, traders began to look anxiously at the robustness of Lehman Brothers, which, although bigger than Bear, is small compared with JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup.

Shares in Lehman dropped 11 per cent yesterday, a far bigger fall than its other rivals, which saw their stock decline by about 3 per cent.

~ from Which bank is going to follow the Bear? ~

'Could Jesus have gotten off on a technicality?'

The Trial of Christ by David K. Breed

" ... Could Jesus have gotten off on a technicality? Mr. Breed, a Missouri attorney, presents the brief for acquittal, and then withdraws his plea--on the basis that Jesus is fulfilling an ancient prophecy, and must die anyway, to save mankind.

He points out major discrepancies between Jewish and Roman legal procedures and the gospel accounts. For instance, the Sanhedrin, the Jewish supreme court, would never have met on the Sabbath, nor condemned a man to death on the same day as his trial. Roman law also gave defendants many rights we now take for granted, such as the right to a public trial, and to cross-examine witnesses, which were not followed either.

Why care about this, the ultimate moot point? In particular, the actions of the Sanhedrin in the Gospel narratives were used to inflame anti-Semitism for centuries. This toxic stereotype seeped into every aspect of the Jewish-Christian relationship. (see this book). While Mr. Breed does not address this issue directly, it is implicit in his thesis.

Some will say that Breed's conclusion is undermined by his evidence. However, this book demonstrates that a devout Christian can use Biblical criticism to reinforce their faith, and even renew it. Whether you believe that Jesus was completely historical, or a fable based on ancient memes of a dying god, this book will provide much food for thought. ... "

~ read the book here ~

'The cult of the suicide bomber' by Robert Fisk

It's easy to find the families of the newly dead in Lebanon. Their names are read from the minarets of Sidon's mosques (most are Palestinian) and in Tripoli, in northern Lebanon, the Sunni "Tawhid" movement boasts "hundreds" of suiciders among its supporters. Every night, the population of Lebanon watches the brutal war in Iraq on television. "It's difficult to reach 'Palestine' these days," Khaled's uncle informed me. "Iraq is easier."

Too true. No one doubts that the road to Baghdad – or Tal Afar or Fallujah or Mosul – lies through Syria, and that the movement of suicide bombers from the Mediterranean coasts to the deserts of Iraq is a planned if not particularly sophisticated affair. What is astonishing – what is not mentioned by the Americans or the Iraqi "government" or the British authorities or indeed by many journalists – is the sheer scale of the suicide campaign, the vast numbers of young men (only occasionally women), who wilfully destroy themselves amid the American convoys, outside the Iraqi police stations, in markets and around mosques and in shopping streets and on lonely roads beside remote checkpoints across the huge cities and vast deserts of Iraq. Never have the true figures for this astonishing and unprecedented campaign of self-liquidation been calculated.

But a month-long investigation by The Independent, culling four Arabic-language newspapers, official Iraqi statistics, two Beirut news agencies and Western reports, shows that an incredible 1,121 Muslim suicide bombers have blown themselves up in Iraq. This is a very conservative figure and – given the propensity of the authorities (and of journalists) to report only those suicide bombings that kill dozens of people – the true estimate may be double this number. On several days, six – even nine – suicide bombers have exploded themselves in Iraq in a display of almost Wal-Mart availability. If life in Iraq is cheap, death is cheaper.

This is perhaps the most frightening and ghoulish legacy of George Bush's invasion of Iraq five years ago. Suicide bombers in Iraq have killed at least 13,000 men, women and children – our most conservative estimate gives a total figure of 13,132 – and wounded a minimum of 16,112 people. If we include the dead and wounded in the mass stampede at the Baghdad Tigris river bridge in the summer of 2005 – caused by fear of suicide bombers – the figures rise to 14,132 and 16,612 respectively. Again, it must be emphasised that these statistics are minimums.

~ more... ~

Media Shield Law Remains in Doubt

Hat tip to the How Appealing Law Blog :

As federal judges order more reporters to disclose their confidential sources, news organizations are pinning their hopes on congressional passage of a media shield bill the Bush administration opposes as a threat to national security.

The legislation being considered in the Senate offers only modest shelter for reporters wanting to protect the identity of confidential sources. In many cases, it would leave the fate of journalists - and their sources - to the discretion of judges who increasingly have been willing to jail or fine them.

Out of nine high-profile cases since 2003 where journalists were ordered to reveal information, four might have turned out differently had the proposal awaiting Senate action been law.

For them and dozens of other reporters subpoenaed for confidential information or the names of those providing that information, judges generally would have to weigh the "public interest" of the media reports; that is a legal analysis many judges already do. They would retain the power to jail reporters who refuse to name sources who leak information involving national security.

~ read on... ~

Google Removes Keyword "Gullible" From Their Search Engine (satire)

" ... Explaining that redundant keyword searches are to blame for low server performance across Google's network, and are a waste of precious search resources, several pointless and unnecessary words and terms will be abolished from Google search databases in order to conserve bandwidth and Internet congestion.

One of the most notable keywords that Google has already removed from their search system is the word "gullible", which Google technicians state is one of the highest wasters of server resources, using as much as 5% of the total database, while offering no value to users who type in the keyword. Organic search results from several other search engines, such as Yahoo, and Windows Live, has also determined that the word provides little or no value to Internet users.

Other keywords scheduled for potential removal are "naive", "duped", "suckered", "fleeceable", and the word "google" itself. ... "

~ from The Toque ~

Philippines defends its extra-judicial killings record

Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. on Friday said the defense and the military establishment would not allow foreign groups to dictate the pace of their reform initiatives in addressing extra-judicial killings in the country.

Interviewed after addressing troops of the Philippine Armed Forces Capital Region Command, Teodoro said that while there may be some soldiers involved in the killings, such extra-legal acts are not sanctioned by the military leadership.

The statement was made days after the U.S. State Department expressed concerns about extra-judicial killings of leftist militants and journalists in the Philippines. The U.S. state department also said that "concerns about impunity persisted."

~ more... ~

Day Brown: 'Heart of Darkness: Capitalism as a Religion'

Posted by Day Brown on alt.psychology :

Loosers in tribal, primitive warfare commonly became slaves. Barford,
in "The Early Slavs" says we have the word because the Slavs were so
often enslaved. They were not good warriors, but farmers. But they
werent good slaves either, commonly escaping into the boonies where
they knew how to live off the land. The slavemasters knew this, and
this limited their abuse.

Tribal slaves were commonly household servants, became well known, and
integrated into the family. Tacitus reports how at German Tribal
meetings, even the women and slaves rose to speak.

Capitalism made a very different thing of slavery with the plantation
system. And in the tribal system, everyone was of the same race.
Capitalism did not abolish slavery, middle class morals and farmers
did that. Solon explained to the Greeks, that if they permited
slavery, then rich men would buy them out or drive them into
bankruptcy, and then farm the land with slaves. Which they did, in
fact, eventually do.

A closer look at European history reveals that it takes a strong
yeoman farmer class to create, and defend, a republic. Gibbon
commented how robust the Roman republic was when the legions were
manned by the sons of yeoman farmers who felt they had an investment
in the system to protect, and some say in the laws. This was destroyed
by what we now call an "all volunteer" army. Before, it was harder to
muster the support for military adventures when the fathers stood to
loose their own sons. After, the legions came to be manned by the
lowest classes and foreigners, some of whom could not even speak the
language.

What we have now is not capitalism, but cronyism using manipulation of
what mite otherwise be the free market to screw everyone else.

Hard times for Carlyle - 'Now that's what I call a storm...'

This was America's Northern Rock moment. Bear Stearns was one of the first banks to admit to losses on sub-prime mortgages last summer and had already sacrificed one chief executive to the credit crunch. But on Friday, just days before it was due to report financial results, it was forced to turn to the Federal Reserve for emergency funding, delivered via its fellow bank JP Morgan.

The two Wall Street giants have offices directly opposite each other, and Morgan's involvement evoked echoes of the Great Crash in 1929, when the bank's headquarters was the venue for the crucial meeting to organise a bailout of tottering financial institutions.

Bear's travails were the final act in a catastrophic week for the world's financial markets, in which every day brought a new, dismal record. The dollar plumbed new depths against the euro and fell below 100 yen for the first time since 1995; the price of gold - traditionally a haven for investors in difficult times - soared through $1,000 an ounce to hit its highest ever level; and several hedge funds stumbled towards insolvency, as banks hit by losses in the sub-prime markets threatened to call in their loans.

From Darling's calm demeanour, it would be easy to imagine all this was a little local difficulty, caused by a shortage of Gordon Brown's favourite virtue, prudence, and that the UK can power on regardless. But by the end of the week, he was discussing the latest alarming developments with his US counterpart, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.

[ ... ]

A Carlyle Group fund admits that it can't meet lenders' demands for money and collapses. The price of gold reaches a record, trading at $1,000 an ounce. The dollar falls further against key currencies.

In its first intervention for more than a decade, the Israeli Central Bank buys dollars to prevent further falls, raising the prospect that other central banks may prop up the dollar. US Treasury Secretary Henry 'Hank' Paulson warns that America's largest banks need extra capital on top of the $70bn (£35bn) raised so far to stop the credit crisis worsening and says tighter regulations are needed on lending to homeowners .

~ more... ~

A publicly traded affiliate of the Carlyle Group said yesterday that lenders were seizing its assets, sending the fund, Carlyle Capital, into insolvency.

The collapse of Carlyle Capital is the first time a Carlyle Group fund has failed and is a stinging embarrassment for the District private-equity powerhouse, which has built an international reputation with a client list that reaches around the world.

The high-profile downfall, part of the broad turmoil in credit markets worldwide, followed a week of frantic negotiations between the Carlyle Group and a number of lenders. Carlyle Group's three founders as recently as Monday were considering injecting cash into the fund as a way to usher it through the credit crisis.

By yesterday the fund had defaulted on $16.6 billion of debt and said it expected to default soon on its remaining debt. The fund's $21.7 billion in assets were exclusively in AAA mortgage-backed securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, traditionally considered secure and conservative investments, which it was using as collateral against its loans.

~ more... ~

Could the Federal Reserve's efforts to prop up the banking system have the unintended consequence of pushing some debt-burdened hedge funds out of business? The question arose this week after Carlyle Capital—a fund with $22 billion in assets at its peak—announced that creditors were seizing its collateral because it couldn't meet margin calls, or requests for additional collateral.

Carlyle Capital's announcement came just two days after the Federal Reserve's announcement that it would allow 20 big commercial and investment banks to borrow up to $200 billion in Treasury securities in exchange for high-quality collateral. A source close to Carlyle Capital endorsed the idea that the Fed's action might have contributed indirectly to its crash, saying in response to a question from BusinessWeek, "it's possible that the move by the Fed emboldened some lenders."

How could the Fed unintentionally have contributed to Carlyle's unraveling? The theory is that the Fed's action made Carlyle Capital's assets more lucrative to the firm's large creditors. Therefore, those creditors had an incentive to let Carlyle Capital fail and seize its assets. Robert Peston, business editor of the BBC, advanced the idea Mar. 13 on his blog, and the notion was quickly picked up and circulated by other bloggers.

~ more... ~

Opiate of the Masses

Television, that is...

" ... Of course, not all addictions are chemical. Any behavior that leads to a pleasurable experience will be repeated, especially if that behavior requires little work. Psychologists call this pattern "positive reinforcement". This is what we mean, technically speaking, by addiction. In this sense, television certainly fits into the category of an addictive agent.

When you watch TV, brain activity switches from the left to the right hemisphere. In fact, experiments conducted by researcher Herbert Krugman showed that while viewers are watching television, the right hemisphere is twice as active as the left, a neurological anomaly. The crossover from left to right releases a surge of the body's natural opiates: endorphins, which include beta-endorphins and enkephalins. Endorphins are structurally identical to opium and its derivatives (morphine, codeine, heroin, etc.). Activities that release endorphins (also called opioid peptides) are usually habit-forming (we rarely call them addictive). These include cracking knuckles, strenuous exercise, and orgasm. External opiates act on the same receptor sites (opioid receptors) as endorphins, so there is little difference between the two.

In fact, strenuous exercise, which produces the nominal "runner's high"- a release of endorphins that flood the system, can be highly addictive, to the point where "addicts" who abruptly stop exercising experience opiate-withdrawal symptoms, namely migraine headaches. These migraines are caused by a dysfunction in opioid receptors, which are accustomed to the steady influx of endorphins.

Indeed, even casual television viewers experience such opiate-withdrawal symptoms if they stop watching TV for a prolonged period of time. An article from South Africa's Eastern Province Herald (October 1975) described two experiments in which people from various socio-economic milieus were asked to stop watching television. In one experiment, several families volunteered to turn off their TV's for just one month. The poorest family gave in after one week, and the others suffered from depression, saying they felt as though they had "lost a friend." In the other experiment, 182 West Germans agreed to kick their television viewing habit for a year, with the added bonus of payment. None could resist the urge longer than six months, and over time all of the participants showed the symptoms of opiate-withdrawal: increased anxiety, frustration, and depression. ... "

~ more... ~

Meta Art - Patterns Reveal/Conceal

" ... Of course, in universe nothing is simple, and in this case it is the mind numbingly complex nature of bizzillions of events all interacting which create the problems. As noted in the graphic below, *all events* send out waves in the pre-creation force, and thus all are creating 'pulse points'.

So, the poor observer gets a view of the future which resembles the jumble seen in the next graphic.

This view of patterns within patterns all interfering with each other is what makes future prediction an art.

At this point within the series, the processing patterns themselves are revealing. We note that at a meta art level, the manner in which the data types are accruing and to which entities is itself revealing of the large scale changes to manifest over the course of this year. We note that accretion patterns are heavily favoring large scale natural disaster, as well as the 'space contact' meme. Further, the 'revolution' meta data layers are growing in all entities, and may be forming a tipping point around our current target date of October, 2008. Further layers of 'revolution' are forming in sub sets across all the sciences, and within areas such as the military, and the TPTB, new contexts are being exposed within these patterns. The multiplicity of cross links continues to expand, both in the number of entities involved in any given context, as well as the depth of supporting layers of aspect/attribute sets.

At this point in the processing of all the data types (immediacy values, shorter term values, and longer term sets), the patterns of accrual are largest around 3/three central memes: dollar death, natural disasters, and 'space energies'. All three have very high visibility summations, as well as multiple points within multiple entities where [manifestation] is set to occur.

Of course, none of this helps with the details. As the complexity of filtering out language grows over time due to language itself changing, there are also problems presented by being able to note such changes at lower levels of granularity. At these levels where it may be suspected that some details might be located, it becomes even more apparent that details do not always suffice to explain the events.

This will be especially true in 2008. The detail layers suggest vast changes across the whole of the social order on this planet. And on other planets in our solar system as well. Leaving our solar neighbors out of the picture for just now, the details suggest that meta data levels of activity here on Terra will combine to produce alterations at such levels as to affect *all* of daily life in this next year. It will start and end with food production. From large scale changes in weather/climate patterns which will devastate the growing of food crops, to coast changes growing in [presence/affect] over the year, the [planet in peril] meme will dominate. Other impacts on food production will come from the expanding [dollar death] meme, and its impact on energy costs, and thus food supplies globally. Further impacts on all other parts of the social order will be felt as well.

It is possible to lift out whole layers of meaning from the concealing jumble of the patterns of the pre-creation ripples from future events. Now we can note that the very last gasp effort of the 'dominator' culture will be expressed over 2008 and 2009. These 'control freaks' otherwise variously described as 'illuminati', and 'cabal', and 'Bilderbergers', are going to be using *every* effort, that is to say, *all* their energy over these next 2/two years to attempt to [restrain] the [loss of control] which are implied by emerging future patterns. That the effort is doomed to fail will not deter them from wasting vast quantities of the planet's dwindling resources in the attempt. They are truly desperate people now. And the data sets point to the [desperation] rising at a very rapid rate from the [vernal equinox, spring] onward.

The modelspace that we use here at HPH suggests that 2008 will be a very interesting year indeed. ... "

~ From Half Past Human - Adventures in Future Viewing ~


Replaying 1929?

From columns around: July 7-15, 2001
Background: Sometime in early July 2001, I was contacted by a fellow who wrote in as a reader of the web site, who is a principal in a think tank that works on esoteric ways to out think the market. One of the approaches used was to send a lot of web bots out to look at thousands of lines of detail on the web every day, do pattern and word recognition, then send back the results, which were then tabulated in an extremely complex modeling program that is so complex, simple engines like Excel could not handle it. Instead, the group used IntelliCad, a program called Prolog, and some LISP code to come up with a "tipping point" model. The following are the comments on the site and reports about the experiment, which include a description of how this very web site managed to "pollute" the model, rendering it useless just a few iterations after it was reported on this site.

Urban Survival Readers Implode Think Tank Model:

Model Prediction: Will the Markets Now Move?

It will be several hours before the after-hours markets open, but when they do, we will see over the following 2-months, whether a highly sophisticated computer model accurately forecast events to come in the financial markets. If you haven't been reading this site on a daily basis, on Wednesday I posted an update forecasting a "tipping point" event this weekend. That work was later upgraded to a major market warning by week's end. On Saturday, I posted that there was a good chance the Star Wars missile test would be the "tipping point".

Before we get into a detailed discussion of the events of this weekend, let me first show you how "tipping point" theory works in complex systems theory.

A "tipping point" occurs when events from the future pass some mathematical point, where the general direction of many future events changes based on the events in the past that lead up to it.

OK, now that you see how the basic mechanism works, the next step in understanding how the much larger model works is to picture what happens when you put lots of these event models into a huge array updated daily over many months. I like to picture it this way: Take a building, tip it over, and as the frequency of points in a "scatter chart" begins to thicken, you get the emergence of something called "entities". An entity might look something like this:

Before (and as) the bluish entity appears, along the dark area, events thicken up, congealing into the entity.

And, after the event (such as the one projected for this weekend), the entity may either continue to grow, or, as events from other sectors of life unfold, the entity disperses over time.

The way the model "ends" will depend on the type of event. Sometimes, the end point (right side of the entity) just sort of dissolves. Other times, the entity continues growing.

What made the entity that the think tank was tracking so interested was that it showed a major tipping point event this weekend, and among the thousands of data points, the model was showing specific highlighted areas of the world, and certain aspects.

Now that we are past the tipping point, it appears that the output from the model may, and I emphasize the word may, have been pointing toward the Star Wars missile test that occurred (unknown to me when the model was posted Wednesday) precisely within the time specified.

Now that the Star Wars project has scored a direct hit, the question is "If this was the tipping point event, how does it change the future in such a way that it will cause a massive change in the markets?" That my friend is precisely the right question to be asking. Let's consider, in a schematic kind of way, what the success of the missile test might mean, over the next two or three years.

If the missile test really is the tipping point, that means we can fill in a box as being "missile test successful". And in the drawing, I have colored this box yellow. With me?

OK, concurrently, the worldwide arms race equilibrium is relatively stable. The caveat here is that it "appears" to be stable. There may be a lot of destabilizing things going on that are below the public's perception threshold, but it seems fairly stable.

Now that the missile test is gone, and the "shot to kill" technology may be working, that will almost certainly lead to the U.S. unilaterally abrogating the ABM treaty. (sorry about the spelling error!)

This in turn causes global uncertainty to develop over the coming months.

And this, in turn potentially puts the world into a very high risk arena. We might see, for example, the People's Republic of China launch a move against Taiwan in the near future, because the longer they wait, the less deterrence their long range missiles will have. If the U.S. becomes an unbreachable fortress from a strategic weapons standpoint, then any potential aggressor now has a major incentive to move sooner, rather than later. Why wait for the U.S. to get "stronger"?

Of course, once the systems are deployed, if the development gets that far, then the risk mode reverses: The U.S. gains a worldwide strategic one-up. Unfortunately, the success of the test has not passed un-noticed to major players like Russia and China. It is sure to bring consequences in terms of how global development takes place. The tipping point theory doesn't predict the specific outputs or pinpoint individual events, but again, getting back to the model, it is forecasting an all-time low of the Dow around 463 on November 8th, 2002.

Whether the world gets past the "risk zone" unscathed becomes the nexus of just one aspect of tipping point problems. Could there also be another tipping point, less obvious than the missile test success? Sure. But does the reigniting of a worldwide arms race have the potential to change markets? Of course. Howard Hill checked in and reported that although the players seem locked, at least Friday, the spreads surrounding South America's mess (Argentina et al) do not appear to warn of an impending breakdown there. This would have been another tipping point possibility...

~ from Urban Survival ~

Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism - and - Poetic Terrorism

Hakim Bey - Peter Lamborn Wilson

Anarchist Sufi and free thinker extraordinaire Peter Lamborn Wilson talks about T.A.Z. (Temporary Autonomous Zones)



Temporary Autonomous Zone

T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism is Hakim Bey's most famous work. It is composed of three sections, "Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism," "Communiques of the Association for Ontological Anarchy," and "The Temporary Autonomous Zone."

The Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ) describes the socio-political tactic of creating temporary spaces that elude formal structures of control. The essay uses various historical and philosophical examples, all of which attempt to lead the reader to the conclusion that the best way to create a non-hierarchical system of social relationships is to concentrate on the present and on releasing one's own mind from the controlling mechanisms that have been imposed on it.

In the formation of a TAZ, Bey argues that information becomes a key tool that sneaks into the cracks of formal procedures. A new territory of the moment is created that is on the boundary line of established regions. Any attempt at permanence that goes beyond the moment deteriorates to a structured system that inevitably stifles individual creativity. It is this chance at creativity that is real empowerment.


From Hakim Bey's Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism


Chaos
CHAOS NEVER DIED. Primordial uncarved block, sole worshipful monster, inert & spontaneous, more ultraviolet than any mythology (like the shadows before Babylon), the original undifferentiated oneness-of-being still radiates serene as the black pennants of Assassins, random & perpetually intoxicated.

Chaos comes before all principles of order & entropy, it's neither a god nor a maggot, its idiotic desires encompass & define every possible choreography, all meaningless aethers & phlogistons: its masks are crystallizations of its own facelessness, like clouds.

Everything in nature is perfectly real including consciousness, there's absolutely nothing to worry about. Not only have the chains of the Law been broken, they never existed; demons never guarded the stars, the Empire never got started, Eros never grew a beard.

No, listen, what happened was this: they lied to you, sold you ideas of good & evil, gave you distrust of your body & shame for your prophethood of chaos, invented words of disgust for your molecular love, mesmerized you with inattention, bored you with civilization & all its usurious emotions.

There is no becoming, no revolution, no struggle, no path; already you're the monarch of your own skin--your inviolable freedom waits to be completed only by the love of other monarchs: a politics of dream, urgent as the blueness of sky.

To shed all the illusory rights & hesitations of history demands the economy of some legendary Stone Age--shamans not priests, bards not lords, hunters not police, gatherers of paleolithic laziness, gentle as blood, going naked for a sign or painted as birds, poised on the wave of explicit presence, the clockless nowever.

Agents of chaos cast burning glances at anything or anyone capable of bearing witness to their condition, their fever of lux et voluptas. I am awake only in what I love & desire to the point of terror--everything else is just shrouded furniture, quotidian anaesthesia, shit-for-brains, sub-reptilian ennui of totalitarian regimes, banal censorship & useless pain.

Avatars of chaos act as spies, saboteurs, criminals of amour fou, neither selfless nor selfish, accessible as children, mannered as barbarians, chafed with obsessions, unemployed, sensually deranged, wolfangels, mirrors for contemplation, eyes like flowers, pirates of all signs & meanings.

Here we are crawling the cracks between walls of church state school & factory, all the paranoid monoliths. Cut off from the tribe by feral nostalgia we tunnel after lost words, imaginary bombs.

The last possible deed is that which defines perception itself, an invisible golden cord that connects us: illegal dancing in the courthouse corridors. If I were to kiss you here they'd call it an act of terrorism--so let's take our pistols to bed & wake up the city at midnight like drunken bandits celebrating with a fusillade, the message of the taste of chaos.

Poetic Terrorism
WEIRD DANCING IN ALL-NIGHT computer-banking lobbies. Unauthorized pyrotechnic displays. Land-art, earth-works as bizarre alien artifacts strewn in State Parks. Burglarize houses but instead of stealing, leave Poetic-Terrorist objects. Kidnap someone & make them happy. Pick someone at random & convince them they're the heir to an enormous, useless & amazing fortune--say 5000 square miles of Antarctica, or an aging circus elephant, or an orphanage in Bombay, or a collection of alchemical mss. Later they will come to realize that for a few moments they believed in something extraordinary, & will perhaps be driven as a result to seek out some more intense mode of existence.

Bolt up brass commemorative plaques in places (public or private) where you have experienced a revelation or had a particularly fulfilling sexual experience, etc.

Go naked for a sign.

Organize a strike in your school or workplace on the grounds that it does not satisfy your need for indolence & spiritual beauty.

Grafitti-art loaned some grace to ugly subways & rigid public momuments--PT-art can also be created for public places: poems scrawled in courthouse lavatories, small fetishes abandoned in parks & restaurants, xerox-art under windshield-wipers of parked cars, Big Character Slogans pasted on playground walls, anonymous letters mailed to random or chosen recipients (mail fraud), pirate radio transmissions, wet cement...

The audience reaction or aesthetic-shock produced by PT ought to be at least as strong as the emotion of terror-- powerful disgust, sexual arousal, superstitious awe, sudden intuitive breakthrough, dada-esque angst--no matter whether the PT is aimed at one person or many, no matter whether it is "signed" or anonymous, if it does not change someone's life (aside from the artist) it fails.

PT is an act in a Theater of Cruelty which has no stage, no rows of seats, no tickets & no walls. In order to work at all, PT must categorically be divorced from all conventional structures for art consumption (galleries, publications, media). Even the guerilla Situationist tactics of street theater are perhaps too well known & expected now.

An exquisite seduction carried out not only in the cause of mutual satisfaction but also as a conscious act in a deliberately beautiful life--may be the ultimate PT. The PTerrorist behaves like a confidence-trickster whose aim is not money but CHANGE.

Don't do PT for other artists, do it for people who will not realize (at least for a few moments) that what you have done is art. Avoid recognizable art-categories, avoid politics, don't stick around to argue, don't be sentimental; be ruthless, take risks, vandalize only what must be defaced, do something children will remember all their lives--but don't be spontaneous unless the PT Muse has possessed you.

Dress up. Leave a false name. Be legendary. The best PT is against the law, but don't get caught. Art as crime; crime as art.