“The primary objective of U.S. foreign and security policy is to protect the integrity of our democratic institutions and promote a peaceful global environment in which they can thrive,” President Reagan wrote in National Security Decision Directive 238 on “Basic National Security Strategy,” which was partially declassified in 2005.
Showing posts with label stand up and say something. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stand up and say something. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
The Purpose of National Security Policy, Declassified
Steven Aftergood's post today on Secrecy News, The Purpose of National Security Policy, Declassified.
Monday, August 13, 2012
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Diving into the wreck
I first read this in, what, 1976 or so?
I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold. ...
We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to the scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Chris Hedges, OWL, the human amp
I've been lazy or busy or both and haven't made my way up to the park for close to a month. I watched this earlier this morning and I started wondering what it might feel like to be part of the chorus. There's the juice of it, the usefulness of it. There's also the message, which you might or might not agree with, but you still deliver.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Hydro for acting! Audrey Franklin!
Vonage voicemail text transcription:
"Hi, this is assembly member Jim Brennan. I'm inviting you to a free screening of gas plant. The award winning documentary about the environmental dangers of Hydro for acting the film will be shown at 630 on Thursday, November 3 at the park slope Methodist Church on sixth Avenue and eighth Street after the film. They'll be refreshments and a discussion about how to respond to the government proposal to allow Audrey Franklin in New York State. I am opposed to Frank. Once again that's Thursday, November 3. Thanks so I hope to see you there"And we are all about keeping Audrey Franklin out of New York State!
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
PURPOSE OF 1969 NUCLEAR ALERT REMAINS A MYSTERY
SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2011, Issue No. 100
October 25, 2011
Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
PURPOSE OF 1969 NUCLEAR ALERT REMAINS A MYSTERY
For two weeks in October 1969, the Nixon Administration secretly placed U.S. nuclear forces on alert. At the time, the move was considered so sensitive that not even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was briefed on its purpose. Still today, no conclusive explanation for the potentially destabilizing alert can be found. Even with full access to the classified record, State Department historians said in a new volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series that they were unable to provide a definitive account of the event.
Previous historical scholarship has inferred from selected declassified documents that the alert was somehow intended to communicate a firm resolve to end the Vietnam War by whatever means necessary. (See "Nixon's Nuclear Ploy" by William Burr and Jeffrey Kimball, National Security Archive, December 23, 2002; and "The Madman Nuclear Alert" by Scott D. Sagan and Jeremi Suri, International Security, Spring 2003.)
But based on the classified record, that interpretation remains unproven and uncertain, according to the gripping new State Department FRUS volume on "National Security Policy" (pdf).
"The documentary record offers no definitive explanation as to why U.S. forces went on this alert, also known as the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) Readiness Test," the editors of the FRUS volume said (Document 59).
"There are two main after-the-fact explanations: first, that nuclear brinkmanship was designed to convince the Soviets that President Nixon was prepared to launch a nuclear attack against North Vietnam in order to convince Moscow to put pressure on Hanoi to negotiate an end to the war in Southeast Asia" along the lines that previous historians have suggested.
The second proposed explanation is "that the President ordered the alert as a signal to deter a possible Soviet nuclear strike against China during the escalating Sino-Soviet border dispute." Consistent with the second interpretation, the FRUS volume provides new documentation of intelligence reports indicating that Soviet leaders were considering a preemptive strike against Chinese nuclear facilities.
Astonishingly, even the most senior U.S. military leaders were kept in the dark by the White House about the nature of the alert-- before, during and after the event.
"It is difficult to measure the success of this operation," wrote JCS Chairman General Earle G. Wheeler to Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird on November 6, 1969, "since... the objectives of the test are unknown."
"It seems prudent if maximum benefit is to be gained from an operation of this type that at least you and I and the senior commanders are informed of the objectives and goals," General Wheeler suggested (Document 92).
In the end, the secret U.S. military alert -- one of only a few such cases involving U.S. nuclear forces -- had little discernable impact. "There has been no reflection of acute concern by the Soviets...," the CIA reported in an October 27, 1969 memorandum included in the FRUS volume (Document 89). "There has been no reflection of the US military alert posture in Soviet or Chinese news media or diplomatic activity."
Of the small White House group that directed the secret 1969 alert, perhaps only Henry Kissinger remains alive and active. He did not mention the alert in his memoirs, the FRUS editors noted, except perhaps in an oblique statement that the United States "raised our profile somewhat to make clear that we were not indifferent" to Soviet threats against Chinese facilities.
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2011, Issue No. 100
October 25, 2011
Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
PURPOSE OF 1969 NUCLEAR ALERT REMAINS A MYSTERY
For two weeks in October 1969, the Nixon Administration secretly placed U.S. nuclear forces on alert. At the time, the move was considered so sensitive that not even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was briefed on its purpose. Still today, no conclusive explanation for the potentially destabilizing alert can be found. Even with full access to the classified record, State Department historians said in a new volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series that they were unable to provide a definitive account of the event.
Previous historical scholarship has inferred from selected declassified documents that the alert was somehow intended to communicate a firm resolve to end the Vietnam War by whatever means necessary. (See "Nixon's Nuclear Ploy" by William Burr and Jeffrey Kimball, National Security Archive, December 23, 2002; and "The Madman Nuclear Alert" by Scott D. Sagan and Jeremi Suri, International Security, Spring 2003.)
But based on the classified record, that interpretation remains unproven and uncertain, according to the gripping new State Department FRUS volume on "National Security Policy" (pdf).
"The documentary record offers no definitive explanation as to why U.S. forces went on this alert, also known as the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) Readiness Test," the editors of the FRUS volume said (Document 59).
"There are two main after-the-fact explanations: first, that nuclear brinkmanship was designed to convince the Soviets that President Nixon was prepared to launch a nuclear attack against North Vietnam in order to convince Moscow to put pressure on Hanoi to negotiate an end to the war in Southeast Asia" along the lines that previous historians have suggested.
The second proposed explanation is "that the President ordered the alert as a signal to deter a possible Soviet nuclear strike against China during the escalating Sino-Soviet border dispute." Consistent with the second interpretation, the FRUS volume provides new documentation of intelligence reports indicating that Soviet leaders were considering a preemptive strike against Chinese nuclear facilities.
Astonishingly, even the most senior U.S. military leaders were kept in the dark by the White House about the nature of the alert-- before, during and after the event.
"It is difficult to measure the success of this operation," wrote JCS Chairman General Earle G. Wheeler to Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird on November 6, 1969, "since... the objectives of the test are unknown."
"It seems prudent if maximum benefit is to be gained from an operation of this type that at least you and I and the senior commanders are informed of the objectives and goals," General Wheeler suggested (Document 92).
In the end, the secret U.S. military alert -- one of only a few such cases involving U.S. nuclear forces -- had little discernable impact. "There has been no reflection of acute concern by the Soviets...," the CIA reported in an October 27, 1969 memorandum included in the FRUS volume (Document 89). "There has been no reflection of the US military alert posture in Soviet or Chinese news media or diplomatic activity."
Of the small White House group that directed the secret 1969 alert, perhaps only Henry Kissinger remains alive and active. He did not mention the alert in his memoirs, the FRUS editors noted, except perhaps in an oblique statement that the United States "raised our profile somewhat to make clear that we were not indifferent" to Soviet threats against Chinese facilities.
Monster
Sent via thingy
Monday, September 19, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Sunday, January 9, 2011
25th anniversary of the destruction of The Garden of Eden
ADAM PURPLE AND THE GARDEN OF EDEN
PHOTOGRAPHS BY HARVEY WANG
FusionArts Museum (Gallery B)
February 2-20, 2011
Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday: 12-6 pm
Friday and Saturday: By appointment only
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 3 from 6-9 pm
57 Stanton Street, New York, NY 10002
NEW YORK, JANUARY 4, 2011 – January 8, 2011 marks the 25th anniversary of the destruction of The Garden of Eden, an earthwork created by Adam Purple that once spanned five city lots on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. This selection of Harvey Wang’s photographs, for the most part unpublished and on display for the first time, documents the expansion of the Garden from 1978 to 1985. Rare prints of a few of Adam’s 1975-76 negatives will also be shown.
In 1975, Adam Purple set out to plant a garden behind his tenement building at a time when the Lower East Side was a crime-ridden wasteland. It was a massive undertaking – the site had been buried in rubble from the demolition of two other tenements. While clearing nearly 5,000 cubic feet of debris using only simple tools and raw muscle power, Adam began to create his own topsoil from materials he found at the site and around the city. In addition to traditional composting, Adam made the seven-mile round trip to Central Park on his bicycle almost every day to bring carriage-horse manure back to the Garden, carrying about 60 pounds on each trip.
His circular design had mathematical and metaphysical meaning: The Garden of Eden grew exponentially with the addition of each new ring of plant beds, and at its center was a double Yin-Yang symbol. By 1986, his world famous eARThWORK had grown to 15,000 square feet. Among the many crops and flowers were 100 rose bushes and 45 fruit and nut trees.
Adam “zenvisioned” the Garden expanding until it replaced the skyscrapers of New York. For Adam Purple—social activist, philosopher, and urban gardener/revolutionary—the Garden was the medium of his political and artistic expression. When the Garden was slated for demolition to make way for a federally funded housing project, many prominent New Yorkers wrote letters and delivered statements of support for Adam and the Garden. Alternative designs that would have spared the Garden or incorporated it into the new structure were displayed in the 1984 exhibition “Adam’s House in Paradise” at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in SoHo. Nevertheless, The Garden of Eden was razed on January 8, 1986, and the new housing project did not include an apartment for Adam or space for a new garden.
In terms of his revolutionary ideas about sustainability and living as humble members of the natural world, Adam was ahead of his time. He has not yet been properly recognized as an important environmental artist. It has been 25 years since The Garden of Eden was destroyed, and this exhibition aims to ensure that Adam Purple and his unique, site-specific artwork are not forgotten.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
To hear an interview with Adam conducted by Amy Brost for the StoryCorps Oral History Project, visit http://www.harveywang.com/podcast.html or download the podcast from iTunes. For the interview transcript, contact Harvey Wang at (212) 777-5918 or hw@harveywang.com. A slide show of selected photographs along with audio excerpts from the StoryCorps interview is on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VfBvdzgQxY
TO HELP SUPPORT THE EXHIBITION, VISIT KICKSTARTER.COM BEFORE FEBRUARY 2. Search for Adam Purple on the site or go to:
http://kck.st/ejHJg6
ABOUT HARVEY WANG
In the 1970’s and ’80’s, Wang was a resident of Chinatown and the Lower East Side, an admirer of Adam Purple, and one of several photographers and journalists to visit The Garden of Eden periodically to document its expansion. His photography career has spanned more than 30 years. Wang’s books include the critically acclaimed "Flophouse: Life on the Bowery" and "Harvey Wang’s New York." His photographs have been exhibited in museums and galleries across the country, including the Museum of the City of New York, the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and the New-York Historical Society. In addition to his work as a photographer, Harvey Wang is a commercial director and a filmmaker. His short films, ranging in style and approach from documentary to experimental, have been seen in festivals all over the world. His film "Milton Rogovin: The Forgotten Ones" won the prize for Best Documentary Short at the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival, and "Triptych" was chosen as Best Experimental Film at the 2004 Rhode Island International Film Festival. He recently directed his first feature film, "The Last New Yorker," which had its theatrical release in 2010.
# # #
www.harveywang.com
PHOTOGRAPHS BY HARVEY WANG
FusionArts Museum (Gallery B)
February 2-20, 2011
Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday: 12-6 pm
Friday and Saturday: By appointment only
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 3 from 6-9 pm
57 Stanton Street, New York, NY 10002
NEW YORK, JANUARY 4, 2011 – January 8, 2011 marks the 25th anniversary of the destruction of The Garden of Eden, an earthwork created by Adam Purple that once spanned five city lots on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. This selection of Harvey Wang’s photographs, for the most part unpublished and on display for the first time, documents the expansion of the Garden from 1978 to 1985. Rare prints of a few of Adam’s 1975-76 negatives will also be shown.
In 1975, Adam Purple set out to plant a garden behind his tenement building at a time when the Lower East Side was a crime-ridden wasteland. It was a massive undertaking – the site had been buried in rubble from the demolition of two other tenements. While clearing nearly 5,000 cubic feet of debris using only simple tools and raw muscle power, Adam began to create his own topsoil from materials he found at the site and around the city. In addition to traditional composting, Adam made the seven-mile round trip to Central Park on his bicycle almost every day to bring carriage-horse manure back to the Garden, carrying about 60 pounds on each trip.
His circular design had mathematical and metaphysical meaning: The Garden of Eden grew exponentially with the addition of each new ring of plant beds, and at its center was a double Yin-Yang symbol. By 1986, his world famous eARThWORK had grown to 15,000 square feet. Among the many crops and flowers were 100 rose bushes and 45 fruit and nut trees.
Adam “zenvisioned” the Garden expanding until it replaced the skyscrapers of New York. For Adam Purple—social activist, philosopher, and urban gardener/revolutionary—the Garden was the medium of his political and artistic expression. When the Garden was slated for demolition to make way for a federally funded housing project, many prominent New Yorkers wrote letters and delivered statements of support for Adam and the Garden. Alternative designs that would have spared the Garden or incorporated it into the new structure were displayed in the 1984 exhibition “Adam’s House in Paradise” at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in SoHo. Nevertheless, The Garden of Eden was razed on January 8, 1986, and the new housing project did not include an apartment for Adam or space for a new garden.
In terms of his revolutionary ideas about sustainability and living as humble members of the natural world, Adam was ahead of his time. He has not yet been properly recognized as an important environmental artist. It has been 25 years since The Garden of Eden was destroyed, and this exhibition aims to ensure that Adam Purple and his unique, site-specific artwork are not forgotten.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
To hear an interview with Adam conducted by Amy Brost for the StoryCorps Oral History Project, visit http://www.harveywang.com/podcast.html or download the podcast from iTunes. For the interview transcript, contact Harvey Wang at (212) 777-5918 or hw@harveywang.com. A slide show of selected photographs along with audio excerpts from the StoryCorps interview is on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VfBvdzgQxY
TO HELP SUPPORT THE EXHIBITION, VISIT KICKSTARTER.COM BEFORE FEBRUARY 2. Search for Adam Purple on the site or go to:
http://kck.st/ejHJg6
ABOUT HARVEY WANG
In the 1970’s and ’80’s, Wang was a resident of Chinatown and the Lower East Side, an admirer of Adam Purple, and one of several photographers and journalists to visit The Garden of Eden periodically to document its expansion. His photography career has spanned more than 30 years. Wang’s books include the critically acclaimed "Flophouse: Life on the Bowery" and "Harvey Wang’s New York." His photographs have been exhibited in museums and galleries across the country, including the Museum of the City of New York, the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and the New-York Historical Society. In addition to his work as a photographer, Harvey Wang is a commercial director and a filmmaker. His short films, ranging in style and approach from documentary to experimental, have been seen in festivals all over the world. His film "Milton Rogovin: The Forgotten Ones" won the prize for Best Documentary Short at the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival, and "Triptych" was chosen as Best Experimental Film at the 2004 Rhode Island International Film Festival. He recently directed his first feature film, "The Last New Yorker," which had its theatrical release in 2010.
# # #
www.harveywang.com
Monday, November 29, 2010
City Council to debate idea of Walmart in NYC
Ug. What's to debate? Please, kids, write your council person. Or go knock on their office door in your neighborhood. It's that storefront on the avenue, currently nestled between the other active small business storefronts. The one that'll be nestled between the empty storefronts if you don't go knockin' now. Crain's article.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Why should I care? Who is my brother? What should I remember?
Shameless promotion: Human Rights and Memory. Coauthored by our friend and neighbor, Danny. Who's proper form of address is apparently Daniel Levy, Associate Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Reahabilitation Through the Arts
The Unofficial House Band of Sing Sing from Fly's Eye Films on Vimeo.
Lota and I attended a benefit last evening for Rehabilitation Through the Arts - mostly theater, but also some music, dance and poetry readings - and you would have had to have been a stone not to have been moved. A few of the scenes and monologues written by prisoner members of RTA were just devastating. And lest you think this is a soft heart-on-the-sleeve sort of thing, New York State Commissioner of the Department of Correctional Services, Brian Fischer, attended and was honored for his support of RTA.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
NY bike riders, please vote!
From TA:
Dear Street Activists,
Crain's asks: Should we pull the plug on Manhattan bike lanes?
Transportation Alternatives asks: Are you serious?
Please vote!
http://mycrains.crainsnewyork.com/polls/2010/10/should-we-pull-the-plug-on-man.php
And forward!
Thanks!
Friday, August 13, 2010
Fictive whiff of fresh air. And grapes.
Somehow, even though it deals with many of the same issues, reading Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year seems like a whiff of fresh air after reading the very well written The Value of Nothing, by Raj Patel, and A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb, by Amitava Kumar. At heart, I'm still just a fiction boy after all these years. (Also read the two non-fiction books on various e-readers, and am reading the Coetzee in glorious paper. See the McSweeney's article Juju pointed us to yesterday: After a Thorough Battery of Tests We Can Now Recommend "The Newspaper" As the Best e-Reader On the Market.) And, yes, I put Diary in the same red paper cover I had used for Island at The Center of the World. Thanks for asking.
About the grapes: yesterday morning at 5 AM I was out back and smooshed some while I was walking around and realized that I was surrounded with the smell of ripe grapes. Woof.
About the grapes: yesterday morning at 5 AM I was out back and smooshed some while I was walking around and realized that I was surrounded with the smell of ripe grapes. Woof.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
NY Pub Adv re Target - yowza
Hi,
For a retailer that prides itself on being socially responsible, Target is throwing its money behind some troubling political causes. That makes them our first “Outrage of the Week”—our way of shining a light on the worst cases of companies distorting our political process under the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling.
Just last month, we learned that Target donated $150,000 to a group supporting right-wing candidate Tom Emmer for Governor of Minnesota. Emmer is a fierce opponent of same-sex marriage and a big booster of Arizona’s new immigration laws. In the past, he even introduced a law that would result in sex offenders being chemically castrated.
On Tuesday, our office teamed up with MoveOn.org to protest Target’s election spending right in front of the retailer’s flagship store in Brooklyn. We had a simple message: hands off our democracy.
Target is one of the first corporations to spend money on elections following Citizens United ruling, and unless we send them a strong message, it won’t be the last.
Take action to keep companies like Target from tampering with our elections:
- Forward your friends our video about the campaign to hold Target accountable or post it on your Facebook page.
- Join our Facebook group “Fix Citizens United: Disclose Political Spending!” and invite your friends.
- Join Public Advocate de Blasio and endorse MoveOn.org’s Fight Washington Corruption pledge.
Stay tuned for our next Outrage of the Week.
Thank you,
Matt Wing
Communications Director
Office of the Public Advocate
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Untitled video on Lynne Stewart and her conviction, the law and poetry (2006)
I post so little lately that it seems like too much to track back through all of the readings and thoughts that gets me here, but here I am. Paul Chan's "Untitled video on Lynne Stewart and her conviction, the law and poetry (2006)".
I will say that the tag I've tagged this with, "stand up and say something", are words I heard Lynne Stewart speak, back in the environy days, leading to the wars of our worlds. If I remember right, she also said, "Make noise!"
I will say that the tag I've tagged this with, "stand up and say something", are words I heard Lynne Stewart speak, back in the environy days, leading to the wars of our worlds. If I remember right, she also said, "Make noise!"
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Tuli Kupferberg
Lost in the morass of Yankee death - Steinbrenner (eh) and Bob Sheppard (no!), was the death of the uber Fug, Tuli Kupferberg.
Kids, renew your vows to be a little more free.
Kids, renew your vows to be a little more free.
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