The whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks may have blood on its hands, the Pentagon said on Thursday, warning its unprecedented leak of secret U.S. military files could cost lives and damage trust of allies.

Admitting, of course, that when the truth is known about the situation, it’s more horrific than we thought. That lying and hiding the truth is the only way we can continue prosecuting this ‘war’ (read: invasion) that no one but the profiteers and defense hawks want. The defense hawks get their campaigns funded by the profiteers.

He also announced plans to tighten access to sensitive intelligence data.

In other words, hide the truth better so the lies can continue to keep us in this forever war. The longest the U.S. has been involved in.

“Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing,” Mullen said. “But the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family.”

Pot: Kettle, I am going to say you are black and intimate that I’m not, even though I painted myself black and you are obviously silver.

The Pentagon and Congress and George W. Bush have blood on their hands of ALL the young soldiers that have died in this invasions, and all the Afghan and Iraqi families destroyed by these invasions. And they’re now trying to blame it on Wikileaks. Please, get real. Why should we believe anything you say, when we find out through Wikileaks that there is way more blood on your hands than you’ve begrudgingly admitted to these past 9 years? You’ve been lying to us throughout this war, why should we suddenly believe everything you say is the honest truth?

We can’t. Your credibility is destroyed utterly until you make all your files available to the citizens who are in charge of this government. By, of and for the people.

Until you stop the lies, you will only look more foolish.

Second, an Evolution UC33e USB/MIDI control surface. Works great, doesn’t have the faceplates, and has been superseded by the ever-so-excellent Akai APC-40 controller that’s designed to work specifically with Ableton. Functions as a USB to MIDI interface as well. If you purchase a power supply (not included by the mfg.) it can function as a MIDI controller for your gear, without any computer needed.

Thirdly, a Behringer BCR2000 rotary control surface, USB/MIDI. 32 knobs, 8 of which have 4 virtual groups, giving a total of 56 or so functions you can control without switching patches. The power button is trying to fall out, though the button itself is sturdy it’s held in by a cheap plastic collar that’s starting to collapse. Comes with power cord. Drivers and/or Sysex patch librarian available through behringer.com. Again, superseded by the APC-40, which does everything the UC33e and BCR2000 can do and more.

There’s also these hole-making drill bits (not hole saws, don’t really go all the way through but scrape out a nice round space). I have no idea what they’re actually called or used for – thought they were hole saws but was sadly mistaken. Then found a set of hole saws in my grandpa’s garage and got my job done anyway. No one’s gonna buy them, and they’re probably going to be thrown away as useless.

BBC: “This is a very sad day for me personally,” Mr Hayward told reporters.

“Whether it is fair or unfair is not the point. I became the public face [of the disaster] and was demonised and vilified.

He added: “BP cannot move on in the US with me as its leader… Life isn’t fair.

“Sometimes you step off the pavement and get hit by a bus.”

And sometimes you work for the biggest oil conglomerate in the world, British Polluters, that cuts corners to increase shareholder profit, has a history of oil spills, explosions and deaths of other oil workers, and your oil rig blows up and kills you.

FUCK YOU TONY HAYWARD. You get millions in severance, half a million a year pension till you die of old age unlike the oil workers you doomed and their widows, and all you can do is complain about how unfuckingfair life is to you?

Will someone please throw this fuckstick in prison already? Anal rape is probably too good for him but it’s a start.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSi7PyJMj3A

The sound quality isn’t great, and the video quality is even worse (aspect ratio totally boned) but still an inspiring setting for inspiring music.

I’m sampling some taiko drums, going to see how they work out when worked into some of my style of music… Also, Ableton allows me to extract the ‘groove’ from the full tracks, so the rhythms and idiosyncrasies of the style can be imparted to the drum tracks and more. Yum!

I wouldn’t mind learning some taiko, given the funds to get lessons (I sure as hell have the time…). Hell, I’d even wear that wrapped on ancient-style Japanese thong and beat the big drum. Why not?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2PM0om2El8

I’d go see it in theaters.

Document Leak May Hurt Efforts to Build War Support

The disclosure of a six-year archive of classified military documents increased pressure on President Obama to defend his military strategy as Congress prepares to deliberate financing of the Afghanistan war.

The disclosures, with their detailed account of a war faring even more poorly than two administrations had portrayed, landed at a crucial moment. Because of difficulties on the ground and mounting casualties in the war, the debate over the American presence in Afghanistan has begun earlier than expected. Inside the administration, more officials are privately questioning the policy.

So, what they are basically saying is that now that the truth is out, they will be even less able to build a case for the continued illegal occupation of Afghanistan.

By most measures, Harley-Davidson has been having a rough ride.

Motorcycle sales are falling in 2010, as they have for each of the last three years. The company does not expect a turnaround anytime soon.

But despite that drought, Harley’s profits are rising — soaring, in fact. Last week, Harley reported a $71 million profit in the second quarter, more than triple what it earned a year ago.

How could that possibly be, you ask?

This seeming contradiction — falling sales and rising profits — is one reason the mood on Wall Street is so much more buoyant than in households, where pessimism runs deep and joblessness shows few signs of easing.

Many companies are focusing on cost-cutting to keep profits growing, but the benefits are mostly going to shareholders instead of the broader economy, as management conserves cash rather than bolstering hiring and production.

So that’s why things look good and the government is crowing about how they’ve saved us, saying it ‘could be worse.’ Every metric except the ones directly affecting you and I look good. The rich guys fire us, make more profit, shareholders give the thumbs up, and the cycle repeats. And much of this is currently funded by government dollars and low-interest loans from the Fed to people with first access to money. You and I can’t borrow money from the Fed at .25%, but the 18 banks allowed to do so are making money hand over fist now. While you and I sink into the debt and despair of joblessness.

So, you drop a track into Ableton, one you know has a rock-solid BPM all the way through, cuz lets face it, what electronic music doesn’t? That’s pretty much the time signature hallmark OF electronic music. But Ableton puts all these crazy warp markers all over the place, and you’re like damn, how do I get rid of all this shit?

click for larger version

You used to be able to click the Warp button twice and Ableton would ask if you’d like to keep the warp markers or start from zero. Not anymore. So what do you do? You zoom into the very first warp marker and right-click on it (ctrl-click for you unfortunate Mac owners who use Apple mice or laptops) and choose “Warp from here (straight).”

Yeah, it’s as easy as that. All the rest are gone. Then go through and tweak accordingly so the beats line up with the measure markers inside the clip view. But, ohnoes, you have the following situation when you zoom in:

click for larger version

So you could double click the transient on measure -1.1.1 to set a warp point, then double click on the warp marker on 1.1.1 to destroy it, then move the -1.1.1 marker to 1.1.1 …. OR you can right-click on the -1.1.1 marker and choose “Set 1.1.1 here” – if you’ve already done the above process Live will automagically delete the warp marker that was at 1.1.1 and replace it with the new one.

Ableton Live – it makes your life easier so you can get around to tackling the really hard jobs, like not sounding like everyone else while you sound enough like everyone else so people don’t hate your music.

So I go to the first determinate beat, set a warp marker, go back to the beginning and delete the starting warp marker. The warp marker on the beat I chose controls the tempo for that track (or clip to use Ableton’s terminology) from the beginning to end even tho it’s not at the 1.1.1 position. I then go and line up the rest of the track. And, like magic, it works just fine. I leave the warp marker on the chosen beat.

Below is a screenshot showing exactly what I mean in case my explanation was less than concise.

click to view full size

In a statement, US National Security Adviser Gen James Jones said such classified information “could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security”.

If by “threaten our national security” you mean expose our hypocrisy tell the embarrassing truth we’ve struggled so hard to hide from the world, then yes, it may.

You know what this reminds me of?

Both the Church committee in the Senate and the Pike committee in the House included several members who fought hard to disclose information to the public, despite an intense and savvy campaign of resistance from the Ford White House (a campaign coordinated by deputy chief of staff Dick Cheney). But though there were many congressmen who fought for disclosure, I soon discovered that the category of “journalists who investigated the CIA after Watergate” was limited to two people, Seymour Hersh (then with the New York Times) and Schorr of CBS. The rest of the press was too easily intimidated by the Ford administration’s claims of “national security” to break any stories of significance.

How much you want to bet the only coverage this story gets in mainstream American people is “Wikileaks is trying to destroy us!!!!!!!!!!” – even though freedom of the press was so important to our founding fathers, whom we all pretend to worship, that it is the very first item in the Bill of Rights guaranteed to all U.S. citizens. It’s enough to make you want to spit.

We have a right to know the truth from our goverment, but they seek to shroud us in lies.

Those of you who know are smiling at that last line there. YES IT WAS A WEB DESIGN JOKE I AM A NERD.

They were discussing the recent leak of the gun camera footage of an Apache attack helicopter gunning down people on the street in Iraq with 30mm rounds. Two of whom were Reuters journalists. The host said “what would you say to an American citizen who came up to you and said ‘my son is in the military, fighting in Iraq, and all your serving to do is increase the hatred of honest Iraqis towards our force for good’”

He responded (this is all paraphrased) “The people in Baghdad, in Iraq, in Afghanistan they don’t need to see the video. They see it every day. We’re not changing their minds at all. It will only change the perception of the people who are paying for it all. That’s our hope.”

Video link for the feed customers.

Good stuff. I expect this poor man will either meet an abrupt, violent end to his life or rot in jail somewhere for a long time so powerful governments can muzzle him.

We need more like him.

The BBC has obtained a copy of a contract offered to scientists by BP. It says that scientists cannot publish the research they do for BP or speak about the data for at least three years, or until the government gives the final approval to the company’s restoration plan for the whole of the Gulf.

And it adds that scientists must take instructions from lawyers offering the contracts and other in-house counsel at BP.22_07_bp_contract

I have handily obtained a copy of the British Polluters contract from the BBC that the BBC obtained from the science departments in question. It is here, 22_07_bp_contract, and is also in the BBC story linked above. Here’s what British Polluters say about the situation:

In its statement, BP says it “does not place restrictions on academics speaking about scientific data”.

Lies, damned lies, and contract law. There’s much more at the link to the BBC above.

You are committing the typical human mistake of assuming that problems have solutions, and focusing your energy on the perceived injustice rather than on progress toward your goal. Sometimes, problems are simply problems. Let me give you an example.

Earlier I mentioned the mountain on Gax that is prophesied to one day be thrown into the sea. Our Elders have decreed it will happen, so once a year everyone entwines their necks and gets onto a synchronistic hive frequency, and then we pick the strongest thousand adults and duly go try to pick up the mountain. (I was on the varsity squad three years in a row, until I threw out my stomodaeum. Threw it at one of the Elders, actually. Long story and epic poem.) And it’s kind of a stupid ritual because nobody ever lifts the mountain.

But — and it took me quite a long time to realize this — that’s the point. Nobody will ever lift the mountain, no matter how hard we try. So, at the end of the Festival, when we all go back to our warrens and caves and volcanoes and split-level townhomes made of chitin, we know that if nothing else, the mountain is still there. We tried to move it, and we couldn’t. So now we have to just plan our lives around it. You humans have feasts and you toast to old victories over defeated enemies, but that puts it in your head that all situations have enemies that can somehow be defeated. On Gax, the Festival is a reminder that sometimes, when we’re trying to go somewhere, there’s just a mountain in the way, and that’s okay. We can deal with it without going all to pieces shouting and railing at the mountain.

So true, such a great insight. They don’t ever stop going back to the problem, but they accept that the problem is there and there’s not much they can do about it.

Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response:

“The largest ingredient in Corexit is oil. And when the ingredients are mixed with oil, the combination of Corexit or any dispersant and oil is more toxic than the oil itself.”

Told you. The EPA knows exactly what is in Corexit, they have to, even though it’s allowed to be kept a secret from the U.S. Public. And why is that?

And I think when you look and see who owns BP, you find that it’s the majority ownership, a billion shares, is a company called BlackRock that was created, owned and run by a gentleman named Larry Fink. And Vanity Fair just did recently an article about Mr. Fink and his connections with Mr. Geithner [U.S. Treasury Secretary], Mr. Summers [Director of the National Economic Council] and others in the administration.

Another direct quote from Kaufman, as part of a “follow the money” story. The idea of “follow the money” is what broke watergate… just saying.

And, for example, in the Exxon Valdez case, people who worked with dispersants, most of them are dead now. The average death age is around fifty.

So, yeah, British Polluters are actively poisoning the Gulf to make themselves look better – all that oil under the surface where it can’t be seen means less dollars spent on cleanup. They added 1.8 million gallons of mostly oil to the spill to in the name of mitigating it’s effects.

It’s almost like you expect Vangelis to pop out at any moment and orchestrate the shit outta things.

The world spit on her for the following:

O’Connor’s career took a political shift — especially in the United States — on 3 October 1992, when she appeared on Saturday Night Live as a musical guest. She was singing an a cappella version of Bob Marley’s “War”, which she intended as a protest over the sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church, by changing the lyric “racism” to “child abuse.”[15] She then presented a photo of Pope John Paul II to the camera while singing the word “evil”, after which she tore the photo into pieces, said “Fight the real enemy,” and threw the pieces towards the camera.

Who’s laughing now, huh? I never heard the ‘child abuse’ part when I was growing up, how about you?

The song is a cover of Ralph McTell:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ctb-SrwL884

Which is actually a cover of Pachelbel, but further discover is up to you.

So, according to the BLS, we are currently # 367 out of 372 in unemployment in America. As in the 367th worst place to be finding a job right now. Figures may be subject to revision. And if you’ve been paying attention, revision is usually a large percentage downwards, so hope is not high.

The other day, a package left on my doorstep was opened, both inside and out. Nothing was taken, but still, shivers. Less than a week later, the store I had ordered that package for was broken in to and robbed. Today a very nervous looking person rang my doorbell and knocked. I, unfortunately, answered the door. He pretexted me with something about me asking his friend if he could repair my car at the shop, and then said that he could repair the car for cheaper. I of course said no to everything, but I shouldn’t have answered the door. Unfortunately, there are 6 windows on the door and all are very visible if you’re up at them, so not answering the door meant they could have just looked inside anyway. I say they because he went and got in the back seat of a car, and then another gentleman got in the back seat as well a minute or so later, and then they all drove off. Weird coincidence, or something more?

I hope I was not getting cased, but it was just too weird. The guy almost tripped and fell walking off my porch. Nervousness, or a fucking tweaker looking to rip me off to be able to score tomorrow? In any case, I am not very happy about the incident and wish we had better one-way curtains on the street- and driveway-facing windows of our house.

I hate to say it, but we live in a place where the front-door walk-in home-invasions, while not common, do happen once every year or so.

Maybe they were just lookin for work, maybe they’re desperate folk on the edge of becoming criminal, maybe they were tweakers looking for homes to hit. Either way it’s not a good sign, and feels even less good to be a part of it.

And it’s a societal problem, not a personal one for those out of work. Until we realize this, it will not really ever be any better, just less worse.

Guess how many links they have in the article to the new startrek.com website? That’s right, zero. Fucking zero.

Guess how many links they have back to their own websites? 4.

You know what, space dot fucking com? I’m not even gonna link your article.