High Masculine Tones

Contents of the McLuhan Issue


The frequently astonishing avant-garde portal at Ubu has just launched an online archive of Aspen, a magazine published from 1965 to 1971 that was delivered to subscribers in a box containing a variety of media: print, phonograph recordings, even reels of Super-8 film.


The range of materials collected is staggering, and appropriately explores an array of multimedia presentation formats: MP3 and RealAudio sound recordings from the likes of John Cage, La Monte Young, John Tavener and the Bill Evans Trio; QuickTime or RealPlayer films from Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Robert Rauschenberg and Hans Richter; and clever use of Flash and javascript for an interactive exhibit of Cage's Score for Fontana Mix and an Underground movie Flip Book by Andy Warhol.


::Aspen: The Multimedia Magazine in a Box
::Site Index

Yep, they did. This angle has some personal resonance. Tomorrow I take my four-month old son Harry to the doctor for his first round of injections, and though I'm more or less satisfied that the relative risks favor immunization, this anecdotal connection is taking on some familiar and disturbing contours...


This piece from the New York Times Magazine a couple weeks ago made for great Sunday morning reading juggling a baby in my lap:

As chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on infectious diseases from 1995 through June 1999, [Neal Halsey] often appeared in the media administering calm reassurance. ''Many of the allegations against vaccines,'' Halsey said in one interview, ''are based on unproven hypotheses and causal associations with little evidence.''

And then suddenly in June 1999, during a visit to the Food and Drug Administration, a squall appeared on the horizon of Halsey's confidence. Halsey attended a meeting to discuss thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative that at the time was being used in several vaccines -- including the hepatitis B shot that Halsey had fought so hard to have administered to American babies. By the time the dust kicked up in that meeting had settled, Halsey would be forced to reckon with the hypothesis that thimerosal had damaged the brains of immunized infants and may have contributed to the unexplained explosion in the number of cases of autism being diagnosed in children.

That Halsey was willing even to entertain this possibility enraged some of his fellow vaccinologists, who couldn't fathom how a doctor who had spent so much energy dismantling the arguments of people who attacked vaccines could now be changing sides. But to Halsey's mind, his actions were perfectly consistent: he was simply working from the data. And the numbers deeply troubled him. ''From the beginning, I saw thimerosal as something different,'' he says. ''It was the first strong evidence of a causal association with neurological impairment. I was very concerned.''

::Image clipped from Tom Tomorrow's November 25th Cartoon.
::Arthur Allen, New York Times Magazine: The Not-So-Crackpot Autism Theory

I just shut down a weblog that was primarily focused on the disastrous course charted by American planners in Afghanistan. I wish I could say I gave it up because sanity has prevailed:

Afghanistan's ability to produce food has been seriously reduced; grain production has fallen by more than 50% in the past two years, and livestock herds are severely depleted. The primary road network is in shambles, with half in need of reconstruction. Outside of Kabul many people still walk three miles to get water.

Terrorism remains an issue, but more and more the terrorized are Afghani civilians. In a recently released report, Human Rights Watch asserts that U.S. military forces are actively backing Ismail Khan, a warlord in western Afghanistan with a disastrous human rights record. Earlier this year, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld met with Khan and described him as "an appealing person," but those suffering beneath his rule would not agree. Human Rights Watch documents widespread abuses by officials under Khan's command, including arbitrary and politically motivated arrests, intimidation, extortion, and torture.

While the United States is shirking its responsibility to contribute to the momentous task of rebuilding and reestablishing stability in Afghanistan, the Bush administration is willing to pay for a new war against Iraq that will not come at a discount. Yale economist William Nordhaus estimates the economic impacts of war in Iraq could be as large as $120 billion to $1.5 trillion.

::Frida Berrigan, World Policy Institute: In Afghanistan, Paying for War is Easier than Paying for Peace via Dack
::Human Rights Watch, October 2002: "All Our Hopes Are Crushed": Violence and Repression in Western Afghanistan

Most of the arguments made in this piece have been made elsewhere. Then again, there is scant evidence that America's leadership is listening to any of them ...

It seems likely that Americans are underestimating the economic commitment involved in a war with Iraq. This is hardly new, for the record is littered with failed forecasts about the economic, political, and military outcomes of wars. The history of war is, as Barbara Tuchman entitled her wonderful book, the march of folly. Is America writing another chapter in the march of folly? It is impossible to know in advance, but historians may look back at several early warning signs of economic and political miscalculations.

The first concern is that the Bush administration has made no serious public estimate of the costs of the coming war. The public and the Congress are unable to make informed judgments about the realistic costs and benefits of the upcoming conflict when none are given. Particularly worrisome is the promise of postwar occupation, reconstruction, and nation-building in Iraq.

... Closely related is a second syndrome, frequently found in past conflicts, of entering war prepared militarily but not economically. The finances of the nation have deteriorated sharply since George W. Bush took office.

... Third, the predisposition of the United States under the Bush administration to undertake unilateral actions poses major risks. From a military point of view, attacking without a broad coalition of countries can make the conduct of the war more difficult and costly, and it may raise the hopes of the Iraqi leadership that others will come to their aid, thereby extending the conflict. From a political point of view, unilateral actions, particularly those taken without support from the Islamic world, risk inflaming moderates, emboldening radicals, and spawning terrorists in those countries. From a legal point of view, America's insistence on the right to overturn foreign governments without the sanction of international law will undermine a wide variety of cooperative efforts on international finance, disarmament, the environment, nonproliferation, and anti- terrorism. From an economic point of view, unilateral actions imply that the costs will be largely borne by the United States.

... Fourth, strategists may be deluding themselves on the reaction of the Islamic world and the Iraqi people to American intervention. ... even though no major Arab government is solidly behind the United States, the administration appears to be persuaded that Muslims are waiting for the overthrow of Saddam to dance in the streets and that Americans will be welcomed in Baghdad as liberators rather than infidels.

... Finally, one senses an obsession bordering on woodenheadedness in the Bush administration's concentration on Iraq in general and on regime change in particular. In contrast to the clear danger from terrorist activities, there is no imminent threat from Iraq.

::William D. Nordhaus, The New York Review of Books: Iraq: The Economic Consequences of War

The painting above appears in Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums. It's only visible for a few seconds, but illustrates how a well-chosen bit of detail can elaborate a character. In this case, it's an early sign that author Eli Cash -- played by Owen Wilson -- is beginning to dabble in ill-advised psychedelic adventurism...


The image made me laugh when I first saw it, but I thought little of it once the movie ended. By happy coincidence I stumbled on this page and learned that the original work is "Attack" by Mexico City artist Miguel Calderon.



::Paintings from The Royal Tenenbaums, series by Miguel Calderon
::Studio 360, with Kurt Andersen traces the path from Calderon's original inspiration for the series and its subsequent ascent to cinematic glory. Listen (RealAudio -- clip begins at 5:42 and ends at 10:54)

Audio Funhouse




Scott Williams put together a characteristically excellent pinko anti-war set on WFMU not too long ago, selections included:



West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band - "Suppose They Give a War & No One Comes"
Aphrodite's Child - "Loud Loud Loud"
John Cale - "Fear is a Man's Best Friend"
Lee Ranaldo - "Isolation"
Cromagnon - "Caledonia"
Bonzo Dog Band - "We Are Normal"
Frank Sinatra & Tommy Dorsey - "War Bond Advertisement"
Beyond the Fringe: "The Aftermyth of War"
The Clash - "I'm So Bored With the USA"



::See the playlist for SW on September 30, 2002: The Air Turned to Poison
::Listen (RealAudio)

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Also from WFMU, Stefan started off his Spiral Sun Plan set for October 17th with nearly an hour of Alexander Cockburn's spoken-word album Beating the Devil laid over a soundbed of recordings by Xiu Xiu and Merzbow.



::Playlist for Spiral Sun Plan - October 17, 2002
::Listen (RealAudio)

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Hunter Thompson has been descending deeper into incoherence since 1972 or so, so I was surprised by how much I enjoyed listening to this interview he did with ABC radio in Australia just before the one year anniversary of 9/11. He's a little foggy at times, but mostly in fine form...



Interviewer: So in that sense, there’s not enough room for dissenting voices?



Hunter S. Thompson: There’s plenty of room there’s not just enough people who are willing to take the risk. It’s sort of a herd mentality, a lemming-like mentality. If you don’t go with the flow you’re anti-American and therefore a suspect. And we’ve seen this before, these patriotic frenzies. It’s very convenient having an undeclared war that you can call a war and impose military tribunals and wartime security and we have these generals telling us that this war’s going to go on for a long, long time. Maybe not so much the generals now, the generals are a little afraid of Iraq, a little worried about it, but it’s the civilians in the White House, the gang of thieving, just lobbyists for the military industrial complex, who are running the White House, and to be against them is to be patriotic, then hell, call me a traitor.



::Program page and partial transcript
::Listen (RealAudio - 37 minutes)

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Naomi Klein (No Logo) and Sameena Ahmad, author of an Economist article entitled "Pro Logo: Why Brands Are Good for You", square off in a debate that gets genuinely nasty at times.



::Listen (RealAudio - 1hr, 23 min)

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NPR interviews Rami Khouri, former editor of the Jordan Times and Youssef Ibrahim, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relation, who deliver a scathing assessment of reckless war-mongering and its consequences.



A sample of their analysis from this article by Ibrahim:

Al Qaeda, according to the CIA and the Pentagon, is reconstituting itself. In fact every Middle East and Muslim affairs expert is saying that Al Qaeda's ranks will be fattened by new recruits right now and will have more of them when the United States attacks Iraq.


Those joining are no longer Muslim religious fanatics. They now include secularist young men and women angry at the impact of U.S. policies on the world's 1.2 billion Muslims.


In other words, a new Al Qaeda, far more dangerous than the existing one, is in the making. Witness the attack on the tourist resort of Bali, on U.S. Marines in Kuwait and on a French oil tanker off Yemen. In Afghanistan the United States' main enemies, Osama bin Laden's cadre of leadership, has disappeared, while his shock troops, the Taliban, are there in their homes and villages sitting on their weapons, patiently waiting for the right moment to go back into action when America gets busy attacking Iraq.


Thus far, all the arguments presented for sending American boys and girls into one of the world's most dangerous neighborhoods are half-truths, spurious assumptions and utter nonsense. Washington simply cannot prove the case that Iraq is tied to Al Qaeda.

::Listen (Real Audio - 7 min)
::Bush's Iraq adventure is bound to backfire



Those last links both via Dack.



::Header image stolen from WFMU