1. To engage the Disinfonaut community at an earlier stage of the creative process than is commonly available.
2. To inform the Disinfonaut community of the practicalities involved in creating Disinformation.com and related projects.
3. To de-mystify the creative process, which is essentially practical.
4. To support the Disinfonaut community, and provide feedback.

Private Aims:

1. To encourage Disinformation.com's editor and staff to recount their experiences.
2. To provide Disinformation's editor with a pointed stick.
3. To expose Disinformation's editor to public accountability.

Note: These aims are adaptations of those devised by Robert Fripp for Discipline Global Mobile diaries.

Sunday, 12 January 2003

11:57. I've started a LiveJournal page that will focus on my foresight studies work at the Australian Foresight Institute.

Wednesday, 18 December 2002

22:19. Post Human writes:

"What is your "attitude" towards Temple of Set nowadays? How do view T/S in the context of "general esotericism", Western-based neo-religions and principles such as offered in Transhumanist and Extropian thinking?"

My exploration of Setian metaphysics and philosophical systems was useful to understand personal influences and antinomian practices. However affiliation is not something I would proselytize for others to have. Unfolding events since September 2002 have focused on the role of protocol and the "balance of power" in the administrative system. While these events may have had psychohistorical and realpolitik dimensions, they could also be evaluated by the non-initiatory perspectives of corporate governance and organizational psychology. Two key theories I've mentioned to Setians who have contacted me are Ichak Adizes' lifecycle model (the "Founder's Trap") and Barry Oshry's Power Lab ("Tops", "Middles" and "Bottoms").

The Temple of Set demanded a rational and modernist framework for noetic experience. It surveyed and reformulated specific practices from certain traditions with a psychecentric emphasis. Because of their goals of harmonization with the objective universe, it evaluated and rejected the majority of "general esoteric" and Western-based neo-religions as "pre/post" developmental fallacies or useful socially constructed fictions. The Order of the Trapezoid and Order of Leviathan have explored aspects of Extropian and Transhumanist thinking, including Hans Moravec's "mind-uploading" scenario, nanotechnology, cyborgs and cybernetic systems, and genomics. I saw some of this research, and discussions about its relationship to the Setian's psychecentric viewpoint, but don't know what its current hypotheses are.

14:01. Allegos writes:

"You can always tell it's a slow news day when Alex Burns turns Disinfo.com into a recruiting site for the Setians. Thanks for disclosing your membership this time."

My past Temple of Set affiliation (June 1996 to April 1998) has been noted at the end of Disinfo.com's "Temple of Set" dossier since 30 May 2001, and was known by regular Disinfo.com readers before then. It's standard journalism practice to disclose any organizational affiliations and allow readers to judge the information for themselves. Disinformation's editorial team makes the effort to update older material in a "just-in-time" fashion where resources and time permit. Our journalistic approach emphasizes a "multiperspectival" viewpoint. While I may be documenting past research and affiliations, this hardly makes Disinfo.com, as you have alleged, to be a recruiting site for the Temple of Set, or any other organization, for that matter.

On that note, I'm very much looking forward to the April 2003 release of Douglas Rushkoff's new book Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism (New York: Crown Publishers, 2003). Rushkoff's thoughts on how Open Source structures can lead to greater transparency in organizations and regenerate traditions will have applications in many other religious and spiritual traditions as well.

Friday, 15 November 2002

01:14. This morning I finished a foresight essay on the collapse of the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management. You can download a PDF copy. This is the "short" version because I used only a fraction of the material I found (the "longer" version will be out before year's end). A gripping and very readable book on LTCM is Roger Lowenstein's When Genius Failed (New York: Random House, 2001). Some unused references worth checking out include Myron Scholes' Nobel Prize for Economics statement, Jeffrey Frankel's astute Brookings Institute briefing on the 'international financial architecture', an Institute For Fiscal Studies paper on uncertainty and investments, and the Government Accounting Office's report. Is there a pattern here? Thought for Disinfonauts: why fool around with Enochian when you can learn about derivatives and risk management (just as esoteric) and achieve world domination?

Thursday, 14 November 2002

06:22. Check out a BBC radio profile of three key environmental thinkers. My latest foresight piece has been a comparison of Mark Daniell's book World of Risk (2000) and Ulrich Beck's World Risk Society (1999). Daniell is a Bain & Co consultant involved in Asian-oriented corporate change, while Beck is a major figure in European sociology and Green political debates. You can download a PDF copy of my review.

Monday, 11 November 2002

04:15. Thanks to a suggestion by Kath Williamson, and invitations from Ben Eltham and Rachel O'Reilly, I'm doing two sessions at the first "Straight Out of Brisbane" festival. The press release touts me as a "conspiracy theorist", though in the post-X-Files/9-11 world, I go by the moniker of "freelance writer" or "strategic foresight analyst". Both sessions are free, so if you're visiting BrisVegas, drop on by and say hi.

Futures Studies & Conspiracies: The War on Terror
(Ben Eltham, Mitchell Porter, Alex Burns)
Friday, 2-4pm, Nov 22
Monastery Nightclub
621 Ann St (on the corner of Ann and Marshall Sts)
Brisbane

"What people in history believe in affects history. Debate about the War on Terror has also been a battle between different theories ("Bush Knew" vs "Iraq Did It") and paradigms ("It's All About Oil" vs "Islam Is The Problem"). Are there choices beyond state-sponsored terror versus geopolitical poker? We'll discuss these concrete theories/issues, progress to a more general discussion of the relationship between futures and conspiracies, and talk about the concept of critical futures studies."

Documenting the Fringes
(Jason Woodwood, Anna Poletti, Alex Burns)
Sunday, 4-6pm, Nov 24
Visible Ink boardroom
139 Constance St
The Valley (Brisbane)

"What are the ethical considerations, responsibilities and tensions encountered by academics and mediamakers who specialise in the coverage, documentation, and criticism of fringe cultures, and marginal cultural 'products'. What do they see their role to be?"

Wednesday, 30 October 2002

00:49. I've been ill for weeks with the flu and been working on postgrad-related projects. Adrian Slywotzky has been one of my favorite business strategists for several years, especially his book Profit Patterns. He is often compared to Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad, authors of Competing For The Future, yet to his credit, Slywotzky championed Dell instead of Enron. So I wrote a brief essay on Slywotzky's concept of Strategic Anticipation as a primer in "pragmatic foresight".

Another major project I've been working on for several years has been correlating research into human values systems (notably the Spiral Dynamics® system) and their representation in film scenes and sequences. I've already mentioned a PowerPoint presentation I gave as part of a postgraduate seminar on "integral futures frameworks". I've spent the past few months logging DVD clips and tracking the interest in 'DIY' DVD commentaries. I'm releasing a draft discussion paper that also considers the dead-ends of dystopian imagery futurology films. The most useful sections for people will probably be the "field guide" (pp. 10-17), the summary of the eight key "deep values systems" in SD (p. 18), the Film Scanning process (p. 19), four key film cycles (pp. 20-21), and a psychohistorical case study (pp. 22-24).

Finally, several years ago I made an oblique reference to 'Holonic Editing' in an April Fool's prank. I gave a quick PowerPoint presentation recently (18 October 2002) to Australian Foresight Institute students about this, as a foretaste of a more indepth paper to be finished in November 2002. Some of this material was also discussed at TINA 2002 sessions on editorial philosophies and how to cultivate alternative sources.

Thursday, 26 September 2002

21:23. Ex-Suck columnist Heather Havrilesky has some great lines in this interview about Web fame and the Zen of Blogging. The big news of today is Christopher Hitchens' decision to leave The Nation. Alexander Cockburn and Edward Herman comment on Hitechens' career. The new Google News continues to have fallout for op-ed columnists and editors. While David Bowie celebrates Ziggy Stardust, New Scientist contemplates Life on Venus. Joe Klein has also written a great Al Gore critique.

Wednesday, 25 September 2002

23:58. Al Gore's "cowboy politics" speech has been praised for its posse rhetoric (a policy dimension echoed in a recent book by Ziauddin Sardar). One defense against this critique of antiwar sentiments is to blend critique with pragmatic action (a nod to Critical Realism). Articles of personal interest: a great piece on "DIY DVD commentaries" (just in time for another mammoth postgrad essay); a Marilyn Manson interview; a great dialogue between novelist Michael Ondaatje and film editor Walter Murch; and a useful analysis of the new Google News service. Agent-based tools, such as this initiative, are part of the Holonic Editing methodology I've been working on.

Monday, 23 September 2002

11:56. Media Watch tonight 'outed' Rosemary Herceg, cofounder of the firm Pophouse and a former Business Review Weekly columnist on futures and innovation issues. Herceg has been in the Australian press lately, so read the following interviews and transcripts, and decide for yourself about Herceg's futures work: The Bulletin lunch interview, MSN Small Business chat, 4 Corners interview and AFR Boss forum transcript. For the next week, you can watch the Media Watch segment as 56k and broadband versions or read the transcript. Below is my letter to Media Watch and Business Review Weekly managing editor Neil Shoebridge:

A couple of comments about Media Watch's 'outing' of Rosemary Herceg:

1. The 'surfing'/'wave' metaphor, popular in dotcom-era Silicon Alley/Valley, can be traced to Jim Dator ("tsunamis of change"), Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Dator first used the metaphor in the early 1970s and it was consequently picked up by futures consultants, and the business press.

2. The term "futurist" was popularized by the US-based World Future Society although it is now in professional disrepute, and often equated with John Naisbitt, "Future Shock", trends-tracking and that pesky Black Monolith. The 1998 and 1999 "Organizational Futures" session (World Futures Society's Professional Members Forum) found a shift from quantitative to qualitative methods, and the displacement of "futurist" by terms like "strategic foresight analyst" and "ideation leader" (source: "Futurists on the 'Inside': The State of the Practive of Organizational Futurists", Andy Hines and Louise Trudeau, "Futures Research Quarterly", Vol. 15 No. 4, Winter 1999, pp. 27-36).

Two alternate viewpoints to the WFS are the World Futures Studies Foundation, which has a global/multicultural outlook, and the Association of Professional Futurists. The Australian Foresight Institute is spearheading professional training with a focus on critical/epistemological futures and pragmatic application (using methods that go beyond Herceg and Pophouse's generic trends-tracking, scenarios and youth ethnography techniques).

Regrettably Herceq's "photographic memory" defence only reinforces the negative stereotype of the business "futurist" as unethical and ungrounded in serious disciplines/research. It's a pity, despite witty writing and savvy graphics, that Media Watch didn't seek a response from these organisations (thus also reinforcing the negative stereotype).

3. The "Fast Company" issue and feature article on "deviance" drew on specific work by futurist Watts Wacker. "Deviance" as nicke marketing strategy was profiled in the early 1990s by US-based writer Douglas Rushkoff, but has now jettisoned the countercultural/techno-utopian ideals that Rushkoff and others have chronicled. Herceg's articles highlight how some business writers (notably with a marketing/public relations background) have appropriated "deviant" rhetoric: Tom Peters cites Saul Alinksy's union campaigns as an example of organizing groups, ETrade used "market socialist" imagery during the 1995-2000 dotcom bubble, and Francis Fukuyama appropriated Jacques Derrida's deconstruction as a term describing the boundaryless/virtual organization. More examples can be found in Thomas Frank's witty "One Market Under God" (Sydney: Random House, 2002). The problem is deeper than plagiarism: journalists and media analysts can show 'knowledgeable ignorance' about sources, or "blind spots" about the ideological assumptions in their worldview.

In closing, MediaWatch did a nice critique and Mr. Shoebridge reaffirmed Fairfax Holding's ethics guidelines when he terminated Herceg as "BRW" columnist. Professional practitioners and "stars in the future field in Australia" need more than a list of blue-chip clients and a Macromedia Flash web site. As with journalists, they need indepth knowledge of their field's history and command of tools. Most importantly, they need ethical guidelines and professional accreditation. Regrettably, a ten-year attempt by WFSF president and AFI foundation professor Richard Slaughter to introduce ethical guidelines, similar to journalist and medical ethicist standards, has met with resistance from some practitioners.

Sincerely,

Alex Burns
Editor-at-Large, Disinformation
Postgraduate student, Australian Foresight Institute

18:13. Two San Francisco Gate articles of interest: a bitchy critique of Project Censored and how much should journalists be blamed for the 1995-2000 dotcom bubble? What about the dangers of personal Web logs? Australian media mavens also check out Four Corners and Media Watch every Monday night.

Friday, 20 September 2002

09:36. The Integral Institute, founded by Ken Wilber, has launched its site. I'm part of the Integral Politics team.

Wednesday, 11 September 2002

17:52. Susan Helf kindly forwarded me some details about a forthcoming public seminar by Washington University on the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization's on-going talks:

The UW Research Center for International Economics is organizing a workshop on "WTO and World Trade, IV: The Doha Round of Trade Talks" to be held on the campus on September 28, 2002. The workshop is being sponsored by the UW International Studies Program, the Global Business Center at the UW Business School, and hosted by the Economics Department.

Seven papers will be presented, addressing various issues about the WTO, the Doha round of trade talks, and world trade. Presenters include Robert Baldwin (Wisconsin-Madison), Arvind Panagariya (Maryland), Judith Thornon (UW), and Kar-yiu Wong (UW). Some of the papers are non-technical and very educational.

For more details and program (to be added soon), please visit here or contact Professor Kar-yiu Wong of Economics. Baldwin and Panagariya's papers are available at the web site for download.

Both faculty and students are welcome to participate. If interested, please inform Pei-Cheng Liao. (Lunch will be provided.)

17:39. The annual This Is Not Art festival in Newcastle (Australia) is on again between October 2 to 8. The Australian Financial Review once called TINA "the best New Economy party in the country." Here are details of several sessions I'll be taking part in:

A Close Up on the Roving Retina
Fri Oct 4, 13:00 to 15:00
Location - Hunter Room, City Hall
"For those not relying on press-releases and syndicated news stories, how do journalists scope the "objective" environment for "newsworthy material"?"

Does Anyone Know A Liberal Voter?
Thu Oct 3, 18:00 to 20:00
Location - Festival Club, PAN building
"How can young Australian writers subvert the current Australian and international political climate? Are there ways for us to express our disapproval, for us to empower others and to think for ourselves? Is it our "duty" as writers to speak up, or is paying the bills more important?"

Editorial Philosophy/(s)
Sun Oct 6, 14:00 to 16:00
Location - Hunter Room, City Hall
"For non-fiction publications containing multiple perspectives, commentaries and methods of analysis - what is the difference between conceptual success and editorial schizophrenia? Do editors steer their publication towards their own holistic vision of what they think it can be? Or is steering not a good thing to do?"

Info-Psychology & Film Scanning
Mon Oct 7, 13:00 to 14:30
Location - Festival Club, PAN building
"This session explores the psychology of activists in the Digital Age: the specters of dystopic thinking, unhealthy group dynamics and sociological propaganda. DVD film clips will 'dramatize' this research."

19:53. The Lexus/IF Awards are on again. This year, the Dark Prince of the Sydney zine scene, Leon Wild ("The Ninth Night" and "Zothique"), teamed up with short film director/animal rights activist Danielle Akayan (a member of the Australian Screen Editor's Guild), to make Life, "an account of the protagonist's journey down the pathway of injustice and incarceration." Akayan was also a finalist in the 2002 Metromedia/Kaliedoscope Awards. Register now and vote for Akayan's film!

Monday, 9 September 2002

17:38. An updated bio and some more Adobe Acrobat versions of past material: Smashing The Control Images, my Startup.com review, Viewer Discretion Is Advised, Futures Studies, Civilization III and two views of Rupert Murdoch.

17:47. Noam Chomsky once told me that newspapers like the Australian Financial Review and The Wall Street Journal were better guides to what was really going on than The National Enquirer. So it was interesting to check out Stanford University's business showcase archives (highlights include Jeffrey Immelt, Donna Dubinsky, Steve Ballmer and Thomas Middelhoff) and Knowledge@Wharton. The interviews hint at the mental models of today's CEOs, who have hopefully read Chun Wei Choo's seminal work on scanning the external environment.

Friday, 6 September 2002

14:22. A printable copy of my Dotcom Deathwatch article is now available for download.

Friday, 23 August 2002

14:34. Monday this week I gave a postgrad seminar at the Australian Foresight Institute on the Graves and Wilber methodologies. The PowerPoint presentation I used can now be downloaded.

Monday, 8 July 2002

09:30. From today's newsletter:

"The present period of culture is, in the whole process of perfecting humanity, an empty and abortive interval."
— G.I. Gurdjieff, Meetings with Remarkable Men

Gurdjieff's synthesis may have preceded the Frankfurt School's scathing critique of the post-war "culture" industry, but it resonates especially with the post-9/11 environment, the face-off between Western modernity and fundamentalist Islam. Samuel P. Huntington's macropolitical "Clash of Civilizations" script has the same function, Gurdjieff might contend, that Freudian psychoanalysis and Mesmerist hypnosis had in the late 19th century: a palatable ideology to explain the cultural, geopolitical and psychological dimensions of radical discontinuities. Gurdjieff's student John Godolphin Bennett contended in his last book The Masters of Wisdom (reissued by Bennett Books) that these insights could be traced to a 13th century school of Muslim mystics (the Khwajagan) that gave birth to the influential Naqshbandi Order. Gurdjieff's insights also occurred during the Russian Revolution and just after the Turkish-Armenian genocide. When we step back and see the macro-view, these historical patterns become evident. Individual efforts become swamped by mass shifts in the environment (but may lead to self-awakening; what William S. Burroughs alluded to when he said: "Some may get through the Gate in Time"). However, the concerted actions of a focused and self-awake network of people, may, over a long period of time, create the prospects for an evolutionary upshift in human emergence. By facing the realities of Death within us and those around us, we may begin to bridge the "empty and aborted interval" and discover the regenerative effects of Self-creation.

Monday, 10 June 2002

20:30. Legendary agitprop spoken word artist Paul Krassner is doing a tour. Check out his battle with FOX lawyers over the introduction to his new album Irony Lives. The tour dates are:

June 10: Small World Books on Venice boardwalk, 6-8 pm. Midnight, KPFK.

June 11: Borders in Westwood, 7:30

June 12: Midnight Special in Santa Monica, 7:30

Ben Praccus of Newcastle's Octapod is working on two intriguing projects: Mythography and Christianarchy.

June 19: Booksmith on Haight St. in San Francisco, 7 pm

June 20: KPFA radio at noon; Black Oak Books in Berkeley, 7:30

July 9: City Lights in San Francisco, 7 pm

July 10: Powells in Portland, Oregon, 7:30

July 12: Perform stand-up satire at The Artichoke in Portland, 8 pm

July 13: Perform stand-up satire at The Old Church in Portland, 8 pm

July 14: Speak at Oregon Country Fair in Eugene, Oregon

Monday, 1 April 2002

16:30. Probably the most anticipated event in recent Australian radio history: Silverchair will play two live sets on Triple J and take questions (at 1900 hrs AEST), to celebrate the worldwide release of Diorama. The new album was produced by David Bottrill. Silverchair were discovered by Triple J, recorded their first album Frogstomp (1995) when the band members' average age was fifteen. They reframed the inevitable comparison with Pearl Jam and went on to conquer the world with Freak Show (1997) and Neon Ballroom (1999).

Thursday, 21 March 2002

20:00. I'm doing an "Anticipatory Global Democracy" workshop at 11:00 AM with Jose Ramos at the Melbourne Social Forum (Saturday, 23 March 2002) in Carlton's Trades Hall building. The keynote speaker will be Z Magazine founder Michael Albert, who will talk about Participatory Economics. Jose and I have been influenced by Robert Jungk and Elise Boulding's development of visioning workshops. Our workshop will help participants to reframe disempowered feelings into empowered outcomes and find the systemic connections between different movements and social activists. Thanks to Friends of the Earth (Melbourne) for hosting details.

Sunday, December 23, 2001

18:50. Some further site tune-ups while benchmarking various Depeche Mode and Garbage multimedia interviews. I'm ploughing through The Guru Guide to the Knowledge Economy, which is basically a glorified quotes/summary chart collection from 150 e-commerce books released between 1997-2000.

22:18. Some details on an old school friend who played in the band "Iambic Pentameter". What did ever happen to Dokken and Billy Sheehan?

Couldn't get enough live jazz in Caf¨¦ Elles last month? Jazz buffs will be pleased to know that thanks to a joint effort between the Australian Consulate General in Guangzhou and Caf¡§¦ Elles, Nick Freer will bringing his special brand of jazz to Guangzhou. A well-established jazz guitarist based in Melbourne, and still in his mid 20's, Freer has toured Europe in the Marinucci Trio, studied in New York with Pat Martino & Barry Finnery (70-80s Brecker Bros), worked with Andrew Gander and most recently been leading his own trio "The Freer Trio". This is a one-off show of his band now called "Freer & Liberators" and not to be missed. RMB 60 including a free drink.

Friday, December 21, 2001

23:36. Early morning meeting with politics faculty professor Robin Jeffrey about my Gurdjieff (Peace Studies) essay and marks. Because I was doing SD training, in post-WTC NYC and at TINA 2001, I didn't meet class attendence requirements. Further commentary on the essay to come. Robin suggested to me that my NYC trip was something that would not be forgotten in a hurry. He's right--it was an "experience of place" that changed me.

I later had an e-mail exchange with Howard Bloom, discussing why the FBI had questioned the bands Anthrax and Megadeth (it's strange that music from ten years ago comes back to haunt you). I also noticed today that a recent Kreator album, Past Life Trauama, features the Enneagram on its cover artwork. I spent the day working on today's Gates of Janus review, and reading Paul D. Miller's (DJ Spooky) proposal to relaunch 21.C magazine.

Thursday, December 20, 2001

14:36. Early afternoon research into white light therapy and resetting the amygdalan memory system.

Russ Kick and our sassy designer Leen al-Bassam are laying out the sequel to You Are Being Lied To.

Wednesday, December 19, 2001

23:07. This morning I stared into the mirror and asked myself why, after flashbacks to this time last year, how I could still 'edit' this site. Then I spent two hours looking at Harvard Business School videos to brush up on boss-employee communication skills.

Sean Healy's MC Hawking interview made me laugh, although I'm always 'worried' that this material will get shotdown by some Disinfonauts as a drop in quality (blame the Australian heat).

Relationship rescript note #2: she preferred Madonna's "Material Girl", I favored The Police's "Spirits In The Material World." It's difficult to get caught by the past image of a person that continues to bleed into the present (only later did I discover that Attachment theory helps to explain how "stacking" problems can sabotage relationships). Hell, I should have taken Richard's advice and just moved to New York City. This heat leaves me dehydrated.

Tuesday, December 18, 2001

11:54. How to rescript the symbolic end of a relationship (three years & eight months later): I thought it was Tristan und Isolde, but the past few weeks have actually been more like Carmen (not Carmen Sandiego).

Morning calls and discussion with Gary Baddeley and tech wizard Lee Hoffman about our e-mail transition. Baddeley gave me some timely advice about some personal circumstances.

I've been reading Ian Brady's book Gates of Janus recently, courtesy of Adam Parfrey. So far, the strongest aspect of the book has been Brady's opening: the kind of nihilistic critique of contemporary society one would expect from a colleague of Hannibal. Will someone "option" this, like other recent Parfrey titles? Who knows, but at least Voluptous Panic would have been a "contender" for a Weimar-era Cinema Studies class.

Tuesday, December 4, 2001

10:59. Last night I caught up with Ben Praccus of the Octapod Collective. We sat at the Punter's Club in Melbourne: I saw a heavy prog-rock outfit and, when Ben arrived with some friends, a das schutezenfest bluegrass band. If you've been on the Church of Virus lists, you'll have encountered Ben's antipodean wisdom. I'm also honing some material for the Fibreculture Conference, later this week.

Monday, December 3, 2001

13:47. All Things Must Pass. Six weeks ago, during my brief sojourn in post-WTC NYC, Richard, Gary, and myself were discussing our favorite music, which ranged from Macy Gray to Miles Davis. Richard and I agreed on something: the remastered All Things Must Pass by George Harrison was a masterpiece.

It saddens me to read of Harrison's death: many had hoped for a part-Beatles reformation at the NYC tribute concerts recently. 1 (2000) had sold extremely well. A group of Melbourne musicians had dubbed themselves "The Quarrymen" and performed a Beatles album live every year (I saw them play the entire White Album, with thanks to Terry Carty).

In recent years, Harrison had been coaxed by friend Eric Clapton, into touring again. I never did see him play, and I'll wonder what might have been. Harrison was attacked in an early Jeff Godwin screed (The Devil's Disciples: The Truth About Rock Music) for his exploration of Hindu religion and meditative practices, but I feel Harrison discovered something crucial: to "get along" in the 21st century, we need to appreciate cultural and religious diversity, and to actively honor that in Others.

The same weekend, Elton John announced that his most recent album would be his last. Perhaps not the demographic for a Disinfo audience, but if you read Steve Albini's article on what actually happens to bands in recording contracts, a scathing piece that has achieved legendary status within the industry, you'll understand why.

How do we deal with death, and with the lost spark of creativity? By being present and striving to remain unattached (not unaffected). Harrison gave a lot to the world. I hope you can look past the Beatles mythology and learn from Harrison's example: apply his insights and inspiration in your own creative endeavours.

Thursday, November 1, 2001

10:34. Sean Healy recently created a subvertisement called "Osama Viagra" for Australia's recent T\LT Festival. Scientists may have finally solved the Tunguska Blast mystery. P2P academia has been launched. Some disturbing patriotism: buy-a-bomb-to-drop-on-Afghanistan fundraisers. Allix Thi Van sent me details of his intriguing site (use Altavista Babelfish to translate), featuring very original analyses about media, marketing, and popculture. Check it out.

In his book Futures for the Third Millennium: Enabling the Forward View (St. Leonards: Prospect Media, 1999: 367), futures studies researcher Richard Slaughter includes a section that could be a Disinfo mission statement:

Positive dissent is an intelligent, caring response to the prospect of a world lurching toward a future that no sane person can contemplate with equanimity. It is a positive attempt to draw attention to the implications of the dysfunctions now embedded in our social, economic and technical systems. It is most certainly not a call to revolution but, rather, to participation and far-sighted, deep design in every area of our lives and work. It is critique, design, vision. It is access to unofficial knowledge. It is engagement with 'the other' and in-depth exploration of non-standard scenarios, visions and outlooks. It is epistemological play in the fields of culture and time.

During a recent SD training seminar, Natasha Todorovic suggested I look at editing as "facilitating human emergence." This morning I had my first session with a friend, using some NLP and Transactional Analysis techniques during our conversation. We worked on two negative meta-beliefs: that she had "failed at everything", and that she needed to "get off her ass and get a 'real' job." In the first, she had made a series of mistakes over the past two years, and was steadily gaining insight into the deep patterns that were causing her to misread the environment. She wasn't her behavior or beliefs (people are more than that), but this meta-belief was reducing her to that. They focused on several key incidents that had arisen because of chance events. And they 'mind-read' her goals and opinions, but never talked with her. In the second, she had endured the collapse of several companies, and produced some great work, but the quality and specific context of the work wasn't appreciated by the people who were criticizing her. They expected her to succeed quickly, whereas the average period to establish a career and 'succeed' (no criteria was specified other than money) in her industry could take six to nine years. She knew that the industry was changing, and that she needed to do in-depth research over many different areas, and then synthesize the results; she needed mentor support to keep her on-track. She also had a different sense of time: an adjustable 10-year plan compared to their 2-year short-term view. 'Blame trap' problems were partly created because people were making 'negative comparisons' to where they were at similar stages of life. The problems she faced and the times she lived in were different: she had to live her own life, not fulfill their expectations. Hopefully, we opened a space for her to move into and grow.

Wednesday, October 31, 2001

20:48. This MTV memo is another indicator that the Entertainment Economy is falling apart. Richard Metzger joked to me, while I was in New York City recently, that if you want to work in NYC television, it's either Viacom or the major networks. After the 1989 Teamster's Union strike, most production houses moved to Los Angeles. Shehamforash to that.

Tuesday, October 30, 2001

11.02. Last night I chatted for several hours at Hawthorn's Universal Caf?/a> with Peter Hayward and Dr. Joe Voros. Much like Rene Daumal's A Night of Serious Drinking, the conversation was wide-ranging, intense, and consciously self-exploratory, ranging from Joe's 'tour of duty' with a little-known company called Netscape, to his work that applies integral consciousness and strategic foresight to 21st century businesses. Peter and Joe invested some time in explaining to me how the Stafford Beer model of operations research and systems management worked.

Joe is a natural storyteller with some fascinating experiences about facilitating human emergence and self-growth. He told me a story about a teacher of his who was interested in exploring Sufism, and made an agreement with a Sufi Master that he would obey their orders. One night, Joe's teacher was awoken at 3 AM by a telephone call:

"So, you really want to study Sufism?"
"Yes."
"OK, go outside to your front lawn, then dig a ditch four feet by three feet wide, 2 feet deep. Then, once you've finished, fill it in."
"What the #$@%? Why?"

The point of this exercise, Joe observed, was to get past the wrong question of the intellect asking "Why?" and 'shock' the student into a wider self-awareness.

Peter also told me how Chilean president Salvador Allende hired Stafford Beer to redesign the country's civil service along the lines of cybernetic information systems. During their conversations, Beer asked Allende who the person was who guided the country's identity. "The people," replied Allende with conviction, which made a strong impression on him. CIA operatives complained that it took much longer to topple Allende's government than they had anticipated, because the civil service was now a self-organizing system.

Monday, October 29, 2001

9:23. Ashley Crawford recently interviewed Douglas Rushkoff. I also liked this piece on systems to predict civil wars.

Friday, October 26, 2001

10:58. Has post-WTC editing of films gone too far? Check out Harry Lyrico's Homeless in Hollywood comic diary. This makes me really mad.

15:13. Either late yesterday or earlier this morning, someone stole a black bag containing a grey NEC laptop from Latrobe University's PEMSO. The laptop contains research and writings, and was due to be fixed because of a dead battery/floppy drive. Please either hand it back to the Union Contact office or contact me. No questions asked, reward offered.

Thursday, October 25, 2001

9:18. Robert Lock has written an interesting piece on Slashdot's subscription scheme. Journalism professor Conrad Fink offers an incisive op-ed piece about the War on Terrorism's censorship of the press. The real lies came from politicians. And then there's the Hypermedia hazard to deal with.

Wednesday, October 24, 2001

12:32. Robert Fripp has offered a free MP3 download ("Refraction") from his Soundscapes performance at the World Financial Center on 1 December 2000. Definately one to check out. I also enjoyed this Plastic.com piece on non-mainstream media, thanks to the people who mentioned us.

Tuesday, October 23, 2001

11:02. Check out some electronic back-issues of the Futures journal. My friend Kylie Purr has written about the impact of the early 1980s mini-cycle of nuclear war films.

Monday, October 22, 2001

21:02. This afternoon I went to Melbourne's Theosophical Society library to hunt down some rare Gurdjieff books for a peace studies essay. I ran into an old Rabelais colleague. After reading various forums on the weekend, I found myself self-questioning links and references as I was writing today's Foresight Principle review. Negative feedback can destroy creativity. Some interesting links: the BBC is resurrecting Phillip Zimbardo's infamous Stanford Prison Experiment for Reality-TV. I saw a documentary of Zimbardo's experiment last year, including archival footage and recent interviews with the participants. It's a pity that the BBC executives probably didn't read Erich Fromm's rebuttal of Zimbardo's experiment in his book The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973). Sid Meier has spoken about the upcoming game Civilization III.

Friday, October 19, 2001

18:32. I'm being interviewed by Vladimir Cunha for a Brazilian magazine, about 9/11 and Disinfo. Meanwhile, Rooster_93 writes:

I used to LOOOOOVE this site. Every day I'd go to it and see what new article or interview with RAW or Kenneth Anger. Then search the archives and learn about something new. Now, it's one of the most boring sites on the web. I think it finally hit me when I read that horendous article on DJ spooky...which sounded like it was written by...DJ spooky.

I used to love reading the discussion forums when the authors did more than gripe about what we were like in 1997. I love Kenneth Anger and RAW too, but hate nostalgia (we had arranged to interview RAW for the 38th annual National UFO Convention, before it was cancelled). Subcultures change and people move on.

now everytime I come to this site one of the four featured articles is a link to the disinfo book. One is an archived video interview and the other two are saturated with shamless name dropping, filled with as many hyperlinks as can fit on a page and use vocabulary that could bore noam chomsky.

Hosting the site, writing articles, and editing streaming video costs money, so the frontpage link to You Are Being Lied To stays (post-crash Web sites need revenue to survive). The DJ Spooky article was overblown to some people, but it reflected its author's enthusiasm (whenever you discover a new way of looking at things, don't you get excited?). I plead guilty to having a boring vocabulary: I'm trying to create a way to track disinformation and information ecologies.

too bad...so sad.

It's a pity you haven't visited the site over the past few weeks, as we've posted an average of three new stories a day, plus other material.

and they never reposted the philip farber interview. that sucks ass.

This is an example of a comment that is ignorant about business realities and passes judgment on us. When big bad ol' Pseudo collapsed, we got the tapes from the cable television version (broadcast in NYC and LA). They needed to be re-edited and re-digitized for the latest streaming video servers. At the moment, we have other projects that are a priority. We have to be tight with costs, and hosting video archives are expensive (our archives are kindly hosted by the awesome Incunabula team). It's not the way that we would like it, but it's the way for now that it has to be if Disinfo is going to survive. We're friends with Phil Farber and hope to repost his interview sometime in the future.

Tuesday, October 17, 2001

2:32 PM. It's anti-PC but darkly funny: embrace Operation Enduring Freedom because "it's time to get your war on." Hammond Guthrie sent me some lyrics about red hair and terrorism--is there music as well? A Murdoch paper was caught in a covert assignment--trying to purchase biological weapons on the Internet. And a great piece on the CueCat as the Internet's dumbest invention. New Republic columnist Andrew Sullivan has written an interesting critique of the New Left: note his comments about the First Amendment and the sliding of politics' tectonic plates.

Tuesday, October 9, 2001

4:52 PM. After returning to Melbourne by overnight train, I discovered that . . . Melbourne finally has its first Starbucks cafe . . . and Rollins Band is playing La Trobe University tomorrow. It's always interesting to see how people react before a Henry Rollins gig. People who love his spoken word material tend to hate his band's music.

Wednesday, October 3, 2001

2:12 PM. I'm in Newcastle, recovering from the This Is Not Art Festival and my recent trip to post-WTC New York City (read here about the Union Square peace protests). Alternet's Cecil L. Bothwell III has written an interesting piece on 9/11 and media crazes. After his Monday announcement, David Talbot is in PR flak mode about Salon. Do yourself a favor today: visit Indymedia's Satellite TV News instead.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001

9:38 AM. Bill Clinton spent 10 hours in Melbourne yesterday. Kiwi dub may be the Pacific's dope soundtrack for summer. Nat Hentoff has written a great piece on the Orwellian reinterpretation of "free-speech radio" at WBAI and the Pacifica network.

5:29 PM. Check out Preston Peet's latest column for New York Waste. Also, a review of Disinfo from June 1997.

9:32 PM. I hate having the flu, which makes staring at computer screens painful. Hello, four-hour paracetamol cycles. Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian has posted some insights into the recording sessions for John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars soundtrack.

Monday, September 10, 2001

2:24 PM. McKenzie Wark has written "R Is For Refuge", about the Tampa incident. Wark's "Hacker's Manifesto 2.0" is also worth checking out.

8:31 PM. Sara Aronson forwarded me a link to Neil Gaiman interviewing Lou Reed.

8:45 PM. High Times has a report on the deaths of Tom Crosslin and Roland Rohm, owners of Rainbow Farm Compound. Crosslin was killed by two FBI agents, Rohm by Michigan state police, after a stand-off.

Tuesday, August 27, 2001

1:26 PM. I'm working on a chapter for the planned sequel to our book You Are Being Lied To, focusing on the systems dynamics of the Dotcom Crash and afterwards. I spent the weekend reading Casey Kaitt and Stephen Weiss's Digital Hustlers (New York: Regan Books, 2001), which has been panned by Silicon Alley insiders, though I found some interviewee comments useful. I'll be looking at several other cycles, including the 1967-1973 period in New Hollywood, and how the spreadsheet changed 1980s corporate culture. This really is the magic for the 21st century.

2:31 PM. Disinfo Contributing Editor Sara Aronson has relaunched her Transubstantiation Media site.

Tuesday, August 21, 2001

10:06 AM. In his book Gandhi and Group Conflict (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1974), Arnie Naess outlined the following Satyagraha propositions (pp. 60-84):

1. The aim in group struggle is to act in a way conducive to long-term, universal, maximal reduction of violence.

2. The character of the means used determines the character of the results.

3. A constructive program -- positive peacebuilding work should be a part of every campaign.

4. One should engage in positive struggle in favour of human beings and certain values; that is, fight antagonisms, not antagonists.

5. All human beings have long-term interests in common.

6. Violence is invited from opponents if they are humiliated or provoked.

7. A violent attitude on the part of would-be satyagrahis (advocates of satyagraha) is less likely if they have made clear to themselves the essential elements of their case and the purpose of the struggle.

8. The better opponents understand the satyagrahi's position and conduct, the less likely they are to resort to violence. Secrecy should therefore be avoided.

9. The essential interests which opponents have in common should be clearly formulated and cooperation established on that basis.

10. Personal contact with the opponent should be sought.

11. Opponents should not be judged harder than the self.

12. Opponents should be trusted.

13. The property of opponents should not be destroyed.

14. An unwillingness to compromise on non-essentials decreases the likelihood of converting the opponent.

15. The conversion of an opponent is furthered by personal sincerity.

16. The best way to convince an opponent of your sincerity is to make sacrifices for the cause.

17. A position of weakness in an opponent should not be exploited. Satyagraha is concerned with morality over and above 'winning'.

Thanks to Dr. Thomas Weber for bringing this list to my attention.

3:50 PM. The Australian site Crikey has posted a list of 85 culturally significant martyrs and suicides. Here's a few quick additions:

Arthur Koestler (1905-1983). Political activist, philosopher and novelist (Darkness at Noon). Broke with Jean-Paul Sartre over communism, explored parapsychology, and debated the merits of psilocybin with Aldous Huxley. Koestler died of a drug overdose in 1983, when faced with incurable Parkinson's disease. Cultural significance: has kept the Theosophical Society and second-hand book-stores in business.

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963). American novelist and poet, famous for The Bell Jar (1963), that drew on her breakdowns and Robert Lowell's "confessional" writing style. While at Cambridge University, she met and married the poet Ted Hughes. Her suicide in 1963 established her posthumous reputation and has inspired legions of 'tortured' English Lit grads and introspective poets.

Ian Curtis (1956-1980). Fronted Joy Division, the legendary British New Wave band, whose most well-known song was 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' (1980). Curtis hanged himself on the eve of the band's break-through American tour, and the remaining members formed New Order. Role-model for Nine Inch Nails and the Goth subculture.

George Eastman (1854-1932). US industrialist and philanthropist who developed dry film plates and flexible film. After making the first commercially available photographic film in 1885, Eastman introduced the Kodak camera in 1888, and a photographic empire was born.

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961). From Kilimanjaro to Cuba, his exploits created a literary icon, and his death created a mythic rebel.

Tuesday, August 7, 2001

11:35 AM. Kudos to David Jay Vincent for pointing out this Sydney Morning Herald review (August 4, 2001) of us and conspiracy Web sites:

Definitely the most cerebral site of an otherwise manic bunch, Disinformation is a melting pot of findings from global thinktanks, universities and philosophers, including Michel Foucault. The site promotes a number of intellectual debates, among these that the media industry has been engineering human consciousness in the Western world since World War II. It also discusses the "suppression" of the findings of Timothy Leary's research into the link between LSD use and quantum physics. For those who aren't afraid of wearing their paranoia on their sleeve, disinfo.com is also flogging this subtle little number - a black T-shirt with "The CIA traffics drugs" emblazoned across the front. Alternative mantras include "You are being lied to" and "Everything you know is wrong".

3:58 PM. I wanted to prod Douglas Rushkoff for writing Playing the Future after seeing this article on kids becoming marketing shills in the plaground. Also check out an intriguing piece that news form determines how you intrepret individual stories.

4:58 PM. The intrepid Sean Healy dropped me a note that Techgnosis scribe Erik Davis will be in Sydney (Australia), speaking at 10:45-11:30 AM on August 18 at the Space Odysseys: Sensation and Immersion exhibition (Domain Theatre, Lower Level 3, Art Gallery of New South Wales). Telephone +61 (02) 9225 1878 Fax +61 (02) 9221 6234. Cost: A$80 full A$70 AGS members A$50 conc (includes GST), including lunch and weekend exhibition pass.

5:25 PM. Richard Metzger has got me into a renewed scriptwriting frenzy. Here's an exchange between Anna Hamilton Phelan and William Froug in the latter's book The New Screenwriter Looks at the New Screenwriter (Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 1991):

Phelan: Write it and try to get your mind to say, "I'm going to write this and then I'm going to put it in a drawer and nobody's ever going to see it." If you can get your head in that place, you'll free up such great stuff that's in your subconscious mind. It will be so wonderful if you can do that. Write it like you're going to give it to nobody. You're going to put it in a drawer. That's hard to do, because we're raised to do x, y, z in class to get a grade. We’re raised for the outcome.

Froug: That's the best advice I’ve ever heard.

Phelan: No attachment to outcome. I don't know where I ever heard it, but I put it down on a little piece of paper, and I had it framed. I have it right in front of me. When I get bogged down I say, "No attachment to outcome. Don't worry about what's going to happen to this. Just write the next word."

Froug: Great. If you think about the money, you're lost.

Phelan: Finished.

As Richard says, "lust after results will ruin you everytime!"

Monday, August 6, 2001

9:06 AM. Could Hollywood be "greylisting" its older scriptwriters? (check out Inzide.com and Drew's Script-o-Rama). Russell Crowe's band, 30 Odd Foot of Grunts, played a surprise gig at the Australian Online Music Awards.

9:24 AM. R. Worrell writes:

Are you deliberately ignoring the rise of ultra-right political skullduggery and manipulative corporate coverups or does it just seem that way?

The US/ is drifting into far-right totalitarianism (conspiracy material par excellence) and you're fiddling about with quasi- mystical stuff. I would have thought that the demise of the world's first "democracy" would be more newsworthy...

In fact, since the 2000 election coup debacle, I haven't seen a whiff of concern over the demise of democratic elections in the US, the sleazy conflicts of interest or the continually escalating McCarthyesque smear tactics of the far[t] right.

Too hot to handle?

Unpopular with sponsors?

As much as I appreciate your highly erudite writing on other topics, I am becoming disenchanted by your avoidance of the biggest conspiracy of all: the shakedown [after only 200 years] of what's left of American democracy.

Still hoping...

R. Worrell

PS Yes the Supremes MUST be impeached.....

"We must crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to bid defiance to the laws of our country."

"The patronage of public office should no longer be confided to one who uses it for active opposition to the National Will"

"The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder."

-- Thomas Jefferson, ca.1800

Here's my reply:

Thanks for your note. Regarding your queries:

1. We're an independent company, and have never censored our editorial content due to outside pressure. We've been very up-front about any content deals, such as with EA's Majestic: The Game.

2. We cover Bush issues in my Daily DubyaWatch blogger, which draws on sources from the whole political spectrum. I've intentionally made this different from other sites, such as NewsMax, Salon, Alternet.org or The Nation. Although Disinfo was perceived to be part of the X-Files/Y2K cycle (late 1990s), we've always been more broader than a conspiracy site (see our press section). We also stess that personal development is an 'integral' part of political activism. Some of these may be 'quasi-mystical' to you, others are very practical (what language we use, which political tradition or social philosophy we draw on, how we frame issues, why we feel the need to create enemies or groupthink).

3. Since I'm Australian, I have a different perspective on Florida 2000 than many Americans: it didn't surprise me, and was not the "loss of democracy" that has 'radicalized' many Americans (more like final confirmation of how representational democracy can become corrupted by vested interests). International observers do not acribe to the Manifest Destiny or patriotism that is an integral part of American domestic politics. This detachment also means that we're less likely to evoke terms like "totalitarianism" or "police state", even when the balance of power shifts. This rhetoric proved to be very effective in the late 1990s ('Pre-Millennium Tension') but, in my opinion, can obscure the complexities of current events and the ongoing search for new solutions. This does not mean that these issues are trivial, just that I see them differently to others. Similar shifts have occurred in UK and European elections, and in the 1998 Australian election that led to the introduction of a Goods & Services Tax. If someone wants to write a compelling and well-argued/written piece on the issues that you've raised, I'm happy to publish it. My personal focus is for people to understand why values change and how institutions work: it's less exciting as "editorial copy", yet it will be a tool for effective reform.

4. In their respective books, lawyers Vincent Bugliosi and Alan Dershowitz explain that impeaching Scalia and the other Supreme Court Justices is unlikely to happen. A more realistic option might be a Citizen's Tribunal, a model that Russ Kick has advocated for a Tribunal on the War on Drugs. Such a tribunal would not have legal powers, but would give people a space to vent their anger and raise their concerns, and possibly generate media coverage, which would create pressure for reform and greater public accountability.

Thanks for your e-mail and thoughts.

8:51 PM. Here's my reply to Christopher Donovan's last e-mail:

Your first e-mail about Mickey Z's article went to a separate e-mail address, I missed it, my apologies. This clears up some things:

1. Mickey Z's article is clearly an advocacy piece. Although his viewpoint has become dominant in a Politically Correct society (aiming for a 'Melting Pot' and 'Multicultural' ideal), this doesn't mean that people understand the scientific research (genetics, archaeology, linguistics etc), and how this is manipulated for sociopolitical ends. Herrnstein and Murray's book The Bell Curve is the most notorious example, arguing that the IQ of parents is more important than their socioeconomic status (yet obscuring the history of Alfred Binet's tests, their culture-bound nature, and innovations in the study of acquired learning). Robert Anton Wilson has contended that many people are still living with cognitive filters from the Dark Ages. If we're going to explore taboo issues, we need to do so with care and precision beyond this advocacy piece. We have a countercultural aesthetic, yet will judge contrarian views on their evidence and logical merits, not simply because they are 'radical' or 'non-mainstream' (and misses the crucial distinction between 'surface' aesthetics, 'hidden' ideologies and 'deep' values: on some things, we may be mainstream, not because we are dogmatic, but because there is sensible and overwhelming evidence for our conclusions). Attacking someone as holding a "leftist wet dream" when scientists including Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforzca, Jared Diamond, Paul Ehrlich and Howard Bloom have backed up Zezima's points with credible evidence, suggests that you have an ideological axe to grind. Individual articles and authors will annoy people, but that isn't a sign that Disinfo has failed as a whole. We get these accusations every-time we print something that the respondent does not personally agree with. So much for getting into other head-spaces.

2. Zezima's point was that the psychosocial definition of race (based on group-identity and skin pigmentation), which has dominated sociopolitical debates, is misunderstood. My training is in biopsychosocial systems development, which acknowledges that there are some biological constraints on our behavior and growth, but is wary of trait-based psychology or strict typologies. Some psychologists and behavioral geneticists exalt the 'bio' and 'social systems' approach at the expense of 'integrating' it with the 'psychosocial' aspects. This creates 'category-errors.' The debate here is beyond "presenting the other view", because there's a spectrum (depending on what evidence you select, and to what ends you point your arguments towards). Humans share about 98.6% of the same genetic make-up with chimpanzees, and the Great Ape Project is exploring this further. What makes Homo sapiens sapiens different to chimpanzees is our potential for self-awareness and cultural evolution. Ruth Hubbard's quote may be in relation to the argument, from genetic anthropology, that if we were to wipe-out a part of the human race, our genetic variation (inherited biological figures) would still remain pretty constant (around 75%). Even though common-sense would tell us that there's a huge difference between 75% and 95% genetic variation, genetic anthropology shows otherwise.

From Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Francesco Cavalli-Sforza's book The Great Human Diasporas: The History of Diversity and Evolution (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1995): "the level of constancy [biological features that do not change over time, or between groups and generations] is not high enough to support the current definition of race. Distinguishing race is a complex matter." Elsewhere (p. 237), Cavalli-Sforza examines another definition of race: "A group of people united by common origins, who to some extent are similar genetically, in terms of inherited biological features. They may also have conserved cultural identity and share traditions, language, and political unity, or may have lost any or all of these." Zezima's key argument, which Cavalli-Sforza elucidates, is that there are no 'pure' races because of genetic variation (polymorphism) and because cultural evolution (memetics) is different to genetic evolution, or even genetic constraints/determinants on lifespan development. This distinction between genetic and memetic evolution was a key part of Dr. Don Beck's strategy to reframe South African society out of the apartheid structure.

3. You write: "Anti-racism has become a mainstream dogma of a nature that your site pretends to be expose, but instead reinforces." I'm not a scientist, but I'll take the guidance of Cavalli-Sforza, Ehrlich, Diamond and Bloom, thank-you. "MickeyZ's attempt to deny opposing scientific views as "racist" and tar anyone who questions anti-racist dogma smacks of the same kind of thought control." You have a point here, and I suggested to Zezima that he heed Ken Wilber's warnings about 'Boomeritis' (having a post-conventional moral stance that becomes rigid and narcissistic), and maybe Popperian falsifiability is relevant. However, since many people misunderstand how the scientific method actually works, and how to critically assess research data, it's wise to stick with the scientific consensus. Where contrarian research is presented intelligently, with appreciation of its sociopolitical implications, we'll certainly explore it. We have to be aware of it first, and keeping track of different cultural and scientific trends can be difficult. The French ruling is part of a Continental law tradition that upholds the safety of minority groups and the civil 'social contract', with a narrower definition of individual political speech than the US. That's your cultural frame-work, the French would argue the matter differently.

4. "I'm basing my criticism on your own stated goals and suggesting that you either change your content to match your goals or change your goals to match your content. If the process is on-going that's good news, I'm glad to hear it." To reiterate my earlier e-mails: yes, the process is ongoing, and its determinants include the individual writer's 'voice' and political stance, the cogency of their arguments, the evidence and language used, and what knowledge I draw on. My eventual goal is for Disinfo writers to have an applied knowledge of E-Prime, Neuro-linguistic Programming and values-systems theory. Our site is not 'inconsistent' or 'logically flawed', but this is a very high standard to meet, and there will be some variance on a day-to-day basis. The great thing about Web content is that is open-ended and can always be expanded or revised. We strive to reach our stated goal every-day.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Friday, August 3, 2001

9:38 AM. Christopher Donovan writes:

The information you present is coated with such a sickening veneer of leftist bias that I can't take it seriously. Drop the act and just admit your prejudices for what they are instead of making a weak statement that you take both sides of any given story into account. You can only string the carrot in front of the kiddies for so long until they encounter an actual life experience, hopelessly complicating the right=bad / left=good binary brainwashing you push. You claim to have open minds but you fail to back that statement up. Is it so terrible to stand up for what you really represent and drop the facade?

My reply:

You apparently didn't read the ongoing editorial discussions in my daily "Welcome to the Machine" blogger, or the relevant dossiers on social judgment theorist Muzafer Sherif and the Expanded Spiral Dynamics Bibliography. Our editorial team has been upfront with their personal "progressive" politics, including the need to "transcend and include" such terms.

We've published material from diverse political viewpoints and will continue to do so in the future. Our claim to "open minds" is backed up by our content; I suggest you look at "Trip Reset" and the "Personal Mutations" articles as examples.

Your letter is filled with presumptumptions and prejudicial judgments, representing an excellent example of "information . . . coated with such a sickening veneer of . . . bias."

Christopher Donovan then replied:

I've been over your website and I have no doubt that you are proud of your token efforts. In the balance your site pretends to unmask "the real thing" while only presenting yet another layer of biased information. I'm sure you have all the necessary disclaimers in place.

"Your letter is filled with presumptumptions and prejudicial judgments"

Of course, I never tried to represent myself as a source of objective or balanced truth. The difference is that I am honest while DISINFO (apt title) is not. The charge I make is that in general DISINFO in no ways represents a complete presentation, that "both sides of the story" are not honestly pursued. I don't think this is wrong of you, of course. I simply think the way DISINFO routinely smugly pretends to have the inside line on "the real thing" is severely undermined by its own bias. You live in a glass house and cast stones, in other words. As you solicited comments from readers, I sent you one. I'm not really interested in your boastful attempts to justify yourself. Indeed, "I AM BEING LIED TO".

C.Donovan
"enemy of the people"

My reply:

Ken Wilber's emergent "integral philosophy" and Herbert Gans' "multiperspectival" journalism model both deal with your concerns about "objectivity" (being a half-step along from the mainstream and "only presenting another layer of biased information"). Wilber and Gans stressed that while a "complete presentation" may never be possible in actuality, editors and journalists should strive for inclusive viewpoints, and be open to discussion and public feedback (ie. we are aware of "living in a glass house": this is unavoidable, something long recognized by editors and cognitive scientists). We've put those "accountability" measures in place, and I'm in the process of embedding Wilber, Gans and others' insights into our still-evolving editorial framework. How is this an example of "not honestly pursuing" our publicly stated values and vision? And what would a "balanced truth" resemble to you?

"Complete presentations" are also reliant on information sources available (we're always updating older material), and the personal opinions of each writer. As for Disinfo "routinely smugly pretends to have the inside line on 'the real thing'": unless you mean our aesthetics and imagery (which our content also critiques), the only time I've explicitly made this claim was about a positioning paper for President George Bush, which was shown to me by Dr. Don Edward Beck (who anticipated the recent "Communities of Character" announcement). I stand by those comments and my reasons for respecting Dr. Beck's confidentiality request. How is this seriousness a "boastful attempt to justify" ourselves?

Of course, judgments about our "effectiveness" or "token" nature rely on what perceptual baggage each reader brings with them. Your e-mails suggest to me that you hold a viewpoint that you feel is not being discussed. You are not being totally honest: it's far easier to j'accuse me of hypocrisy than to try the practices I've outlined. Your dismissal of any real dialogue ("I'm sure that you have all the necessary disclaimers in place" and "I'm not really interested in your boastful attempts to justify yourself") reveals that and evades any personal responsibility for backing up your statements. Your cynicism is understandable.

No-one forces you to visit Disinformation. Perhaps it's time for you to move on to somewhere else.

Christopher Donovan then replied:

I agree, in concept, with what you say you are striving for. I disagree that the content of your website reflects what you say. I am as aware as you are of the etherial quality of "objectivity" - you are using it here as a means to hide. Your site is far more removed from any good-faith effort to approach objectivity than it pretends. As evidence, I could site many articles, but the example I just sent is a pretty typical one. The article I talked about presents something as "objective truth" when the very sources Mr. Z uses to "prove" his claim in fact refutes it.

This is alarming, because in essence Mr. Z is simply regurgitating lies that are quite status quo and in no way "outre" as your site's aesthetics suggest. This is a problem common to many other articles on your site.

My particular point of view is irrelevant because I am not the one with the website pretending to be more open-minded than it really is. You are correct, however, my particular viewpoint is not represented on your site very well. Again, you solicited feedback, and here it is. Sorry if it is not to your liking, but not everyone is going to accept your conceits without question. The left certainly has no claim of ownership over, or immunity from, Nietzschean perspectivism.

What, to me, is a balanced truth? Conflict, as in hire some writers who are as right-wing as your current ones are left-wing. Writers as hellbent on exposing the "liberal" media bias as your current ones are of exposing "corporate" media bias.

Obviously I don't have to read your website, we both know this, the only purpose you must have for suggesting that I stop is that it would solve the little problem I've raised. Courageous. If I am cynical as to the prospects of "real dialog" it is because of my experience and the value I attach to my spare time.

C.Donovan
"enemy of the people"

My reply:

I'm not using "objectivity" as a means to hide at all: what I am saying is that my understanding may not be yet conveyed throughout all our pieces, or be shared by other writers. This is a matter of ongoing "inner" personal and professional development. If you want an avowedly right-wing or conservative site that exposes "liberal media bias", I suggest you try NewsMax.com, WorldNetDaily.com or FreeRepublic.com. I have included perspectives from these sites, and have been willing to publish material by their authors. As Russ Kick notes in his introduction to You Are Being Lied To, we have less conservative or right-wing views than we want, because some authors reject the opportunity. It's not for want of trying, and our goal is to transcend these descriptions.

You failed to mention Mickey Z's article in your past e-mail, and you also failed to provide evidence that "disputed" his claims (I'll often link to contrarian Web material to provoke debate). As I wrote previously, "objectivity" relies on the individual author's viewpoint, especially when they are arguing for a specific view (cf. Preston Peet's commentary on the "War on Drugs" or Nick Mamatas' critique of globalization). I did point out some criticism of Mickey Z's language, when discussing his piece: to paraphrase Ken Wilber, pluralistic egalitarianism and pluralistic relativism rejects value rankings, hierarchies, anything that resembles authoritarian structures, and "attacks" anyone who holds "unconscionable views" (particularly on gender and race issues), even when the critic had previously held those views and then discarded them. This "problem" is a developmental/values one, and can be discerned within all political viewpoints. Wilber also critiqued "personal narcissism", something evident in both our e-mails.

Mickey Z's "viewpoint" forcefully re-states some issues about race and gender politics in America that may need to be restated, regardless of our "outre" aesthetics. People understand these aesthetics in different ways. Tying us to the aesthetics ("surface values") without considering the issues ("hidden" and "deep" values) imposes an "ideological rigidity", even when it is a viewpoint that you privately hold. Your comment that our "site is far more removed from any good-faith effort to approach objectivity than it pretends" suggests that you are comparing us to some other site, an ideal, or your own interpretation of what we "should" (categorical imperative) look like. Conflict, as Muzafer Sherif and the Harvard Negotiation Project have both pointed out, usually leads to an "excluded middle". I have used this by linking to different viewpoints in articles; the onus of debating these views is on the reader. There are also other techniques.

When did I claim that your viewpoint was "irrelevant" or that your viewpoint was "in the minority"? I have clarified some editorial issues for you. My ongoing "Welcome to the Machine" correspondence reveals that these issues are represented by Disinformation's audience (whatever their political views), and that I take these allegations very seriously. Nietzsche advocated an "asperspectival view" (using a diamond metaphor) that transcended the left-right political paradigm, not a "Nietzschean perspectivism" that the New Left "has ownership over" (the same point could be made for the New Right's abuse of Darwinian "natural selection" evolutionary theory).

You write: "Obviously I don't have to read your website, we both know this . . ." Obviously? I know this? "The only purpose you must have . . ." Only? Must have? "For suggesting that I stop is that it would solve the little problem I've raised. Courageous." Why invoke the "moral high-ground"? Our minds delete, distort and nominalize information (Neuro-linguistic Programming), especially when we "mind-read" others. Put yourself in my shoes, go back and re-read your final two paragraphs. I've replied, and offered references, to our ongoing solution about your "little problem".

If your "experience" and "time" means that you decline to study that information, that's your prerogative. I've clarified our editorial stance about your "little problem". I also pointed out that, since we "pretend to be more open-minded" and are "far removed rom any good-faith effort", you're free to look elsewhere. And I can be free from the Sisyphean burden of "disproving" your cynicism.

Christopher Donovan then replied:

I do appreciate the time you have spent answering my comments. Despite my combative tone and our obvious differences in values and perspectives I've learned from our exchange. I am not telling you to make your site "avowedly right-wing", I merely suggested that if you want your site to live up to what is written in your "about" section you should have a better representation of the "other side of the story", and I suggested one way you could do that (hire some writers that are biased in the other direction). I am not trying to swing your site one way or the other, I am only comparing it to your own statements and pointing out the disparity.

I sent you an email with the subject line "example" that talked about MickeyZ's article and what he has left out, didn't you get it? All I was pointing out was the fact that Mr. Zzz attempts to present race as "biologically meaningless" as an undeniable scientific fact, when that is not at all the case - the link he provides to an article by C. Loring Brace is actually part of a larger presentation by NOVA online that DOES present the other side of the argument. It is a joint-piece including George Gill that shows just how divided scientific opinion is on the matter. For MickeyZ to pretend that this is not the case is very biased, which is what we are talking about in the first place. Forensic scientists know that race very much does have a biological basis, if it didn't, they would not be able to accurately discern the race of a body simply by examining its bone structure. Mr.Z points out that all humans share 75% (actually it's more like 99%) of the same genes. What he fails to mention is that we also share 95% of our genes with Chimpanzees. Obviously, 5% or even .01% makes an enourmous difference. Mr.Z only presents one side of the argument, ignores the other, and pretends that he is presenting "undeniable scientific truth". This is at odds with the stated goals of your website. Furthermore, the "issues" about race and SEX that MickeyZ raises are mainstream, they are constantly shouted from every rooftop in our culture, and in fact it is verboten to question them and THAT is what we "may need to be reminded of". Anti-racism has become a mainstream dogma of a nature that your site pretends to be expose, but instead reinforces.

In France simply publishing criticism about minority racial groups is punishable by fine and/or imprisonment (see: Brigit Bardot and her latest book). MickeyZ's attempt to deny opposing scientific views as "racist" and tar anyone who questions anti-racist dogma smacks of the same kind of thought control. We don't need to be "reminded" to inspect everything we hear for "racism", it is shoved down our collective throat every day, we need to be reminded to suspend judgement and look at the facts, uncomfortable as they may or may not be.

As to the irrelevance of my perspective, I never siad you thought it was so - go back and read my email, I am the one who stated that it is not relevant. I'm basing my criticism on your own stated goals and suggesting that you either change your content to match your goals or change your goals to match your content. If the process is on-going that's good news, I'm glad to hear it.

I am not comparing your site to MY ideal or what I think it should be like, I am comparing to the position STATED ON YOUR SITE, that's the whole point, your site is inconsistent, logically flawed. You have admitted this and said that you are working on the problem. That's great.

C.Donovan
"enemy of the people"

And here's the crucial e-mail (Thu, Aug 2nd 2001 20:16:58) by Donovan that I missed:

Case and point: "on your mark, get set..." by 'MickeyZ'.

Mr. Z presents a wall of dogmatic 'truth' when he flatly states: "the concept of race has no biological meaning". he proceeds to quote every scientist from the side of the debate that happens to agree with this leftist wet-dream. No mention of George Gill is made, let alone the fact that this issue is HARDLY an uncontested matter within the scientific community. He actually claims that his pet-position is "scientific fact" when the very article he links to by C. Loring Brace includes an opposing view by George Gill, along with plain evidence that the scientific is ANYTHING but unanimous in claiming that race has no biological meaning. Foresic pathologists can determine a body's race from its bone structure, they do it every day. Even in proping up his sagging argument he gets it wrong - he quotes Ruth Hubbard as saying 75% of known genes in humans are the same. The real number is probably closer to 95%. He does not mention the fact that more than 75% of human genes are the same as those of Chimapnzees. Obviously, that 25% makes a hell of a lot of difference. This is all common knowledge in this particular debate, the issue is hardly settled. Where is the "open-mindedness"? Where is the "other side of the story"?

Perhaps you should take a look at your website before advising me to do so, or is it that you only read your own material?

C.Donovan
"enemy of the people"

12:03 PM. c0le! writes:

Just a quick note to let ya'll know how I feel about what has happened to disinfo.com. I used to come to disinfo to get good coverage of issues not covered by corporate media and it's unique insights. Which is what it used to be. Now, however, your website has become a commercial for your "battering ram" (ha) of a book (it's kinda funny that it always stays in the number 3 "story" spot and always seems to be your featured item all the time.), as well as for X10 ads (what the fuck is THAT all about? That's as bad as it gets!) PLUS I have to look at the chek.com ads whenever I'm checking my mail. Isn't commercialism one of the bigger things we are trying to get away from in our evolution above capitalism?? I've seen ads for the new American Pie movie for fucks sake- If I wanted candy coated corporate ads shoved in my face, I'd watch TV. So yeah, maybe you should change your slogan to something HIP like "down with the man!(unless he pays us enough to put ads on our site cuz moneys is what's really important)" Right? I understand that there are certain bills that have to be paid, but the LEAST you could do is support some of the independent web retailers, or maybe if you actually got your act together and became what you claim to be, people would be more than happy to contribute some green energy. But I think it's fairly obvious that money is the main motive here. Speaking of, who's disinfo.com's parent co.? I have a feeling that you certainly aren't an independent venture (just a feeling, ya know?) I'd really appreciate to hear what you have to say in response.. hope you appreciate the comments and hopefully put them to good use.
cm

Gary Baddeley, Disinformation's publisher, replied:

1. Yes money is the most important thing - without it we'll stop publishing.
2. If X10 is the only company paying decent money to advertise, that's whose dollars we have to accept.
3. Yes, you have to look at ads to check your FREE disinfo.net mail account.
4. Yes, we are promoting our book as heavily as possible. It's a good product and if we sell enough copies we'll publish another one. You'd probably enjoy it if you bought one.
5. We are independent. Just a few people who care about what they do.

Thanks for writing.

2:30 PM. Here's proof, after this morning's correspondence, that Disinfo has a neanderthal for an editor.

6:03 PM. From an e-mail to Howard Bloom in an ongoing discussion about the anti-globalist movement:

Let me zero in on something: "I see the way of reforming these companies very differently than do the street activists and the black block of the anti globalist movement."

I agree: my daily reading material these days is Harvard Business Review and management literature. :) I'm not anti-business, and when I deal with a busines audience, I adopt a different style. Amory Starr's book Naming the Enemy distinguishes between a "bottom-up" movement (street activists) and a "top-down" movement (business seeking to become more accountable and open). I frequently use the example of Royal Dutch/Shell: Arie de Geus, Charles Handy and Peter Schwartz's work on organizations as "complex systems" and scenario planning. This is news to activists who know of Royal Dutch/Shell only from the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa!

You've pointed out the group dynamics of this activism, which is crucial for effective activists to know. And you're right: certain groups are already using Giuliani's death at Genoa as a recruitment tool (the posters are up).

My ferocity was because the prevailing paradigm is anarchism/systems theory, not Sino-Soviet-style socialism. Mainstream media is still dealing with 1960s stereotypes (ie. this is not simply New Left, but a response to Life Conditions), and alternative media has its own stereotypes to evolve beyond. I'm equally confrontational with activists whose vision of management is 40 years out of date, and who talk about trans-national entities without understanding their structures or complexity. Those who rely on past stereotypes will "misread" what makes this time "different".

What these new activists are grappling with is an environment (which Douglas Rushkoff has nailed) that has turned your "profit prophets" into rigid CEO "corporate religions" (cf. my Disinfo dossier and TNR magazine's recent coverage of GE's Jack Welch and Amazon's Jeff Bezos), where "unselfish dedication" is hijacked to serve the organization and shareholders (cf. Erich Fromm's "Marketing Personality"). Some people reject the "messianic" language that you use because they have been (or feel) betrayed in the past by institutions that have manipulated this language.

We need to keep the "big picture" in mind, and also the "key details" that drive flashpoints from Seattle to Genoa. Your paleospych "secular salvation" and "missing laws of evolution" will be a welcome addition to this.

Thursday, August 2, 2001

11:25 AM. Grateful Dead fans can check out a 1994 two-hour concert (one of a trillion bootlegs. Business management magazines are filled with misleading metaphors: business judo is another one of them. Also check out a great article on the legal implications of nanotechnology.

12:53 PM. Here's an in-progress piece on memes, bloggers as social networks, and Nike protests. It's more fun than the Harvard Business Review on Change (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 1998) book that I'm reading at the moment.

3:19 PM. Web detritus: a PDF document claiming to be a list of World Economic Forum attendees and passwords. And this is what America under faith-based initiatives has to look forward to.

8:47 PM. Molly Hankwitz posted a great message to the Fibreculture list that raises some relevant issues about readership and the mainstream/alternative media deate:

just reading over this fascinating debate regarding mainstream media, identity and popular desire...

i'd like to now throw in my comments:

1) I have no idea in at all why Cornel West (spelled with one L) was brought into this debate - i guess as representative of the American left which supposedly has not contributed significantly to critiques of mainstream media. Professor West should hardly be singled out in this way - or scapegoated - as lacking in some area as his intellectual concerns have never been, in the main wrapped around the mainstream media.

2) I'm hard put to make separations between this ordinary people category and being an intellectual as the role of the intellectual has throughout history been obscured in numerous discourses, including right-wing discourses of anti-intellecutalism by appearing too exotic, strange, queer, geeky, or troubled. Intellectual people are pretty ordinary especially in terms of their desires.

3) What is an ordinary person? - or is human identity in late post-modernity - so constructed by advertising and marketing demographics that participating in what everyone else does and has makes us "ordinary"? Do we have this category because of mainstream media which speaks to a demographic of ordinary people - cultivating a palette of ideas which have appeal to everyone?

4) Is being ordinary akin to categories of what is "human nature" or what amounts to participating in an idea of The Good?

5) In the discussion of mainstream media and advertising there has been little mention of the inherent economic relationship between sponsorship and programming. If commodities are to sell, ads for them are sold and placed with shows which help support them culturally.

5a) Important to this discussion is a much much larger picture of the mediascape in which mainstream media sits - i.e. what is actually happening to public broadcasting, radio, tv, cable for the people in a time of grand historic mergers of major corporate media? What is happening to its economic base? How is Net usage and streaming media affecting older forms? Is public media drying up save for a few feats of activist stations like Free Speech or Deep Dish? Are we, the people, losing ground? Some perspective on this from Australian media people would be good - since Gough Whitlam put the Film Commission on the map.

6) To add to my number 5. I would like to include in this discussion 'women' as a category of ordinary people for whom the media, mainstream or not, but especially mainstream has never been to kind - run until the last 15-20 years primarily by white men, advertising and mainstream media has had to be challenged by women in order to change the categories by which we are viewed - or moreover - by which we are made spectacle - especially in the regions of popular desire - as we are one of the most demographically-speaking manipulated groups - very often where our IDENTITY is concerned

7) I'd like to hear in this "debate" - largely dominated by a slew of the male-gendered - a few other voices in order to substantiate the truly vital history of post-modernity which valorizes multiple perspectives, the act and art of reading, cultural and political difference.

8) I tend to agree that Chomsky's arguments are somewhat outmoded, though significantly inspiring to many, especially younger artists. Reason: because I feel that alternative perspectives need to be brought into this discussion in order to gain more clarity as to the nature of the debate to begin with!

9) Doesn't anyone on this list who participated in Media Circus feel like writing up some account of this important multicultural independent media event? I could not make it back to Melbourne and I feel the absence of information on Media Circus on this list. Perhaps some of the organizers could post up an account or an inspiring comment or two as a result - presumably it was just great.

10) I do not agree that there has been no substantial American tradition of critique of these issues as most of our political movements which vary in their radicality - to be sure - but which are, however quite powerful histories when looked at outside of their popularization through the mainstream media, have been - in the main - essentially critiques of the media. The public sector is also and has been for years, loaded with vital, critical, diverse contributions to discourse on the media - SO if anyone is getting a new book out of this ::fibrecultures:: content, please do your homework at the New York Public Library, et al.

Information not only wants to be free, but she also wants to be loved.

molly

Wednesday, August 1, 2001

9:15 AM. Scroll down this journalism books list at Jim Romenesko's MediaNews to read a scathing entry by Narco News editor Al Giordano:

I must be terribly out-of-the loop. The very first books I would give J-students to read are missing from the lists. I'm neither shocked nor surprised.

Here is the book list for the Basics of Journalism 101 class that, I guess, will never be taught. But in some corners (you know who you are) continues to be lived.

3:44 PM. Green Tara and I have been having a great e-mail dialogue about anarchism and the specter of Disinformation's "assimilation" by corporate media. Here are some excerpts from my latest reply:

On how independent thought can be manipulated: That's a risk that can never be avoided. The Graeco-Armenian philosopher George Gurdjieff once met with an American group that was studying his work. "So, we go through life, asleep?" one member asked. "Yes," Gurdjieff replied. "And," he added wryly, "it's going to get much worse." Erik Davis makes a similar point in his book Techgnosis: just as you can erase the tape-loops in your mind, some-one else can come along and "re-program" them under the guise of "personal/spiritual liberation". Two ways to avoid this are by endless Socratic self-questioning, and what Viktor Frankl called "the ability to choose how you react between stimulus and response".

On commercial assimilation and editorial values: I think the point of Disinfo is that we recognize that, sooner or later, "an incarnation of the unavoidable doppelganger" (wow! you hit the nail on the head) will occur. All "liberation" movements change over time, and without "external shocks", succumb to assimilation/entropy. So, since it will occur, we'd rather be at the helm than AOL/Time-Warner. We're staking out that "higher ground".

Unlike other media, the Internet is an open system. So, anytime we move towards "selling out", we get feedback (the judgments also reflect the values of the people who critique us). Another solution is to "go meta" (shift to another level), as NLPers would say. A third solution is to constantly remind people of other alternatives and individual sites.

A healthy commercial structure and "conscious" use of marketing does have its advantages: we can bring these insights to a wider audience (which threatens people whose personal identity is tied into subcultures). Commercialism and marketing have become so rampant, however, that many people fail to make this distinction in "aims" and "scale".

On anger and editorial values: A couple of other people have told me to keep the firebrand burning :) A related issue is how people use their cynicism and anger in a productive sense. Content that simply "pisses me off" without direction or reflection can be just as limiting as your targets. You have to distinguish between the "surface imagery" that gets attention, and the "deep thinking systems" behind it. When a subculture gets co-opted, the "surface imagery" is assimilated, sans "deep thinking systems": anyone can get a belly-button ring, yet the same action in a "Modern Primitives" context has different meaning, right? :)

The other effect of using these abstract models can be that I "split" my personal anger from how I editorially view the situation. Some people "misread" that as living in theory; I'm trying to call attention to the fact that we have an "imperfect understanding" of situations and others.

On holonomic editing: What I'm working on will transcend point/counterpoint altogether. This can happen at several points: the writer covers different perspectives, the editor suggests other viewpoints during the editing process, and the audience uses the forums' "virtual space" to offer alternatives.

The writer, editor and audience all have to consciously look for including more "span" (individual topics) and "depth" (alternate views within each topic). This becomes difficult when the writer feels strongly about an issue and simply wants to make a point (even if it is a point that needs to be made). They can get the conclusion "right", but the premises "wrong". Or they can get the "right" conclusion, and then attack others without remembering that they had to go through a process to "let go" of wrong views.

Tuesday, July 31, 2001

1:51 PM. If you're interested in an Antipodean spin on culture/media theory and politics, check out the Fibreculture discussion list. Here's a post by David Cox:

I'm less interested in joybuzz ringing methods than in the fact that we all live in a kind of psychic miasma of very harsh and incessant signals which seem to surround us at all times of the day, with no way to shut them out.

Call me an alienated white boy, but I lament the passing of public space, public knowledge, public existance which have been swept aside post WW2. Are there any ideas which have not been copyrighted? Are there any spaces which are not festooned with logos? Is there room for a future dreaming which is not a shopping scheme? No amount of gloss on the publication can deflect the reality of a world in which people feel alienated from their own lives, condemned to live a life of debt, work and boredom.

For all his Napoleonic posturing, Debord hit the nail on the head when he wrote:

"The Spectacle is not a collection of images, rather it is a social relation among people, mediated by images."

Lets always ask ourselves 'what are the social relations assumed to be in place?' when analysing a media text in terms of its intended audience. This is what Negativland do, what John Saffran does, what Craig Baldwin does.

This is different from taking that same media fragment and seeing it in terms of how it is intended to satisfy public desire. First you must identify the relationship between the text, its intended audience and then the broader socio economic framework into which both the text and the audience are required to fit into in order for the individual media fragment to perform its task.

Surely this one-way non-stop hailstorm of media is as Chomsky would argue, evidence of a propaganda model of media proliferation? Closer to a Pavlovian notion of people as over-stimlated dogs, who upon hearing the bell ring, associate the media ads around them with the various myths of happiness portrayed therein. This is of course tied up with the biggest scam of all: work, and a view of the world in which suburbia and family life are ALL THERE IS.

I'd gleefully prefer a microcinema culture of DIY media over the dreck on the various mainstram media channels if given a choice. It is usually only when I'm in San Francisco's Mission District or Newcastle's Electrofringe, parts of Brighton in the UK and parts of the Netherlands that I feel that I'm part of a broader social movement in which people re-claim the media as something which is theirs and not something to be along with everything else consumed passively.

Propaganda model continued: The media might even be seen as a kind of continuation of electromagnetic warfare technqiques which saw the total blurring of the lines between strategic uses of media technology and commercial ones. This is certainly the premise of Craig Baldwin's masterpiece film "Spectres of the Spectrum".

Liberal reformist arguments about 'ordinary people' just don't do it for me, but films like this do. They examine the world with fresh eyes, like those of Acker, Burroughs, Chomsky, McCluhan and Debord.

Raoul Vaneigem:

To be an owner is to arrogate a good from whose enjoyment one excludes other people --while at the same time recognizing everyone's abstract right to possession. By excluding people from the real right of ownership, the owner extends his dominion over those he has excluded (absolutely over nonowners, relatively over other owners), without whom he is nothing. The nonowners have no choice in the matter.

2:42 PM. I just discovered that my favorite arcade game of the early 1980s is on-line: the 1983 Windmill Software version of Dig Dug. I was also a fan of Moonbugs and Conquest. So, I'll be cutting down on daily editorial content . . .

Monday, July 30, 2001

4:13 PM. I just had a meeting with Graham St. John, whose freeNRG anthology is scheduled for a September 2001 release (first as an e-book edition). Graham kindly gave me a copy of the manuscript, currently being edited, for Disinfo to review. Graham's compiled some incredible anthropological material, including the Earthdream convoy, Ohms Not Bombs, and the definitive history of the Mutoid Waste Company. It's no surprise that Invisibles creator Grant Morrison is claiming that Australia has some of the most progressive countercultures in the world. It's like a retro-trip to Douglas Rushkoff's Cyberia, but with a distinctly Antipodean flavor.

9:53 PM. Check out the 2001 Webcuts Festival.

1:33 PM. I spent part of the weekend reading George Soros' book Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1995). Check out this Salon profile. A key section (p. 216) discusses the influence of Karl Popper's model of scientific falsifiability:

I have to invoke Popper's beautifully elegant model of analytical science. The model is composed of three kinds of statements: specific initial conditions, specific final conditions, and generalizations of universal applicability. These three kinds of statements can be combined in three different ways: generalizations combined with initial statements yield predictions; combined with final conditions, they provide explanations; and the combination of specific initial conditions with specific final conditions provides a test of the generalizations. To make testing possible, the generalizations must be timeless.

I love the simplicity of the model. Popper used it to resolve the problems of induction, that is, progressing from the particular to the general. He showed that scientific method does not need inductive logic, it can rely on testing instead. Only theories that can be tested qualify as scientific.

I want to use the model to show that reflexivity [Soros' philosophy, adapted for financial market speculation] plays havoc with it. If a reflexive interaction can change both the participants' thinking and the actual state of affairs, timeless generalizations cannot be tested. What happened once does not necessarily occur when you repeat the experiment and the whole beautiful structure collapses. No wonder! Underlying the model is the unspoken assumption of a deterministic universe. If phenomena did not obey timeless valid universal laws, how could those laws be used to produce predictions and explanations?

Soros' insights are relevant to how audiences perceive Disinformation, and how our "editorial voice" has evolved: how our audience perceives us will alter how we perceive them, and what kind of content we cover in the future.

Saturday, July 28, 2001

1:25 PM. Dylan Skriloff had some more feedback on the Wisconsin Supreme Court decisions:

And we also have the right to play devil's advocate with you! What an unnecessary attack! however, ill take it in goodness rather than spite. listen man, speaking for myself I enjoyed your addition and found it informing and challenging to my conceptions, since i've never really taken anytime to get in touch with legalese. i guess when you are a layman you are too disgusted to even get close to it, but you raise the very worthy point that we must get to know it. my gut reaction to the piece was simply that you downplayed things too much. i reacted with this part of me when writing my critique. that was intuition at work. i think i made a good point about the seatbelt case analogy.

after that case, even though i only know a most minimal amount of details and only read a few press clippings and articles (which is clearly a weakness in my argument) i think we should have every reason to first react with alarm. i am concerned that their may be an actual concerted effort within the judicial community to consciously steal away rights. it would have been interesting if you also dealt with that aspect of the dialogue. so i guess your piece CAME ACROSS as onesided. Consider the response you got; remember the force on our end reflects the force on your end. you push a square down and another pops up.

*maybe* you should write with a little bit more finesse when dealing with certain issues... i dunno. keep up the good work tho

Dylan

And here's my reply:

As Disinfo's editor, I get attacked and critiqued all the time. When you are in the public eye, and dealing with controversial issues, have to shoulder that, whether I like it or not. That also includes people's preconceptions about what Disinformation "should" write about, "should" have an editorial stance on, and what kind of people our staff are. I don't have a choice: people will always play "Devil's Advocate". You did make a good analogy with the seatbelt analogy :)

Playing the "fear" card, as Russ did, gets an audience. Look at the "stimulus-response" to his article: everyone agrees that this is a serious decision (the right response), but no-one looked at the decision text itself, no-one countered that there are precedents at both a US Supreme court and international level that would "strike down" the decision. In other words, Russ downplayed the scope of the decision, downplayed the legal and institutional structures in existence, and used a "slippery slope" argument that pushes all the right "moral buttons" but would be torn apart by the prosecution. And, if "we're being lied to", why play into the same "politics of everyday fear"? Why should open-minded "Athens" look inward to become tyrannical "Sparta"?

You write: "i am concerned that their may be an actual concerted effort within the judicial community to consciously steal away rights." Another way to re-frame that is: the judicial community has different values in reaching its decision. When I wrote my piece, I put myself into the judge's viewpoint, and thought: "OK, why would I create this decision?" Russ views this as "impinging on civil and reproductive rights" (I agree). The judge might say: "civil rights are part of the wider community, and it's OK for me to use shame and deterrence to keep individual responsibility in check under an extreme case." If you want to defeat the decision, you have to defeat the argument, which means understanding the "thinking systems" that the judge is using, not getting trapped in labels of "judiciary" or "judge" or even "counterculture Web site". The "theory" that everyone critiqued me about is what an attorney would privately consider before giving her arguments.

I "downplayed" things to "up-play" how the institutions work, and what other options there might be to resolve this. For example, everyone knows that Microsoft used anti-competitive practices on Netscape. But this "folk" understanding, even though it's right, was attacked with some very good counter-arguments. I see an "oversimplification" of institutions, and "playing" to reader's fears, in a lot of other places. People can reach the "right" conclusions but totally miss the depth. Without the depth, your tactics and strategies are narrowed. That's why I critiqued Russ, because the "rush" to "fight" without first understanding why other views have prevailed is self-limiting. Your understanding will inform what actions you subsequently take, and what comes into being.

Thanks for your feedback and support :)

Friday, July 27, 2001

5:11 PM. I should have known that when I decided to play "Devil's Advocate" to Russ Kick's polemic on two Wisconsin Supreme Court decisions, I'd be hoisted by my own patois. Here's a sampling of the article's feedback:

Dylan Skriloff wrote:

for all the value of your response, I still am worried about any judgements like this, with the current trendline of the supreme court. i think i internally decided to renounce my citizenship when the court ruled that it was okay to jail people for seatbelt violations. if russ kick wrote a similar somewhat sensationalized warning about that case before it got to the supreme court, you could have just as easily dismissed some of his main points with legal theory etc. but now the police across the country are empowered to absolutely abuse citizens, unless the citizens manage to pass a law against it in their jurisdiction. but of course, most people value "safety" more than freedom. for all the big words alex, this case is still disturbing. don't lose sight of that!

q.sl let me know:

Beyond the legal theories comes the idea of how will the decision be enforced? Jail time: you have, in essence, created a debtors prison (it happens here, but it's not supose to happen). The other alternatives... and the justification for a police state becomes a little more tangable. Also, the same penalties were not applied to the other (presumed) nine people. Why? If they are not as complicit, consider the issue as sexism. If the law can not be judiciously enforced, what is the point? The precedent then becomes a dangerous proving ground. Is this too much of an oversimplification? Throw away your books.

Green Tara was the most vocal:

I saw that another person started their comment with 'For all it's value...' But the only value in this article is to display that the editor knows more about legal books and not so much about legal practice in America. And to demonstrate faulty logic from a very arrogant man.

The decision to restrict a man from having more children because he isn't paying his current child support does *NOT* make any sense in current American custom. Our courts generally do not remove the punishment from the crime: a man who doesn't pay child support (there are thousands of them in my state alone) is told he'll go to jail every time he misses a payment. For those or any new babies. Because the babies aren't illegal- the non-payment is. *That* is the issue; and to police anyone's responsibility in that fashion (attempt to handle it for them the way a parent would) is not the place of the government here. It is not reasonable. Precedents are used as guidelines in courts of law- once one is set, the decision is considered 'appropriate' unless struck down by a higher court. It was stated that these were upheld by higher courts. I don't know what things are like in Australia, Alex; but a lot of us don't want that sort of thing happening here.

I'll probably make more comments about more incorrect assertions in this article later- I have to go now.
:-)

So much for my contrarian attempt! Here's my reply:

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for your postings about my piece. Since there's a lot of concern about what I raised, I want to answer a few things.

Firstly, I think Russ wrote a great piece, and I agree with the reasons why he wrote it. We need to monitor these cases, and anyone who has read Russ' work knows that he's great at raising issues. My own viewpoint is much closer to his than my piece might initially suggest. Just because I challenge a few things doesn't mean I'm 180 degrees opposite to Russ or condone the judge's decision. And it doesn't mean that people should stop fighting it.

Secondly, I personally agree that no-one should have their rights infringed as in this case. It is disturbing. I wanted to raise some issues and perspectives that I knew would go against the grain of Disinfo readers. Damn it, if we can't play "Devil's Advocate" sometimes with our own "reality tunnels", then I'd prefer you all go and read a site like NewsMax.com, which blurs the line between reporting, opinion and propaganda.

We're missing two key documents: the judge's decision text (which explains the legal reasoning and cites any precedents), and the facts of the case. Those determine the case scope, not just the moral viewpoint a reader has about the decision. If we're going to directly confront this case, let's deal, as a legal team would, with primary documents.

Thirdly, I wanted to attack the label of "police state", even though Russ used it as hyperbole. By doing that, I am not denying the seriousness of this case. I have not forgotten the implications. You may need to "jolt" people to act, but pressing people's fear buttons does not work in the long run. People who are fearful do not always perceive the complexity of the legal institutions they are dealing with, and make strategic/tactical mistakes. People who are fearful are at risk of Ellulian "sociological propaganda", even when they reach the right conclusions. These mistakes will help to perpetuate wrong decisions. Public pressure is one thing, but knowing how the legal machinery works is also a key to fighting this.

Some of you have dismissed what I wrote as "knowing more about legal theory than reality", even though I included lines like "That's how precedent works in theory, reality is another matter." Well, I know how the US legal system works. I also quoted material that explains, contra Green Tara's common misunderstanding, how precedent actually works (even though the journal is called "Legal Theory": it would be clearer if you went and read the article). The pplicability of a precedent to a case is determined by several things, including the individual case facts, the arguments by litigating and defense attorneys, and other counter-precedents.

If you want to counter-argue against the judge's decision, you have to first understand his reasoning: the logic, motives, priorities, and tradition ('natural law', not liberal). Attacking the "moral wrongness" of the decision won't work, because the judge may come from a framework that has different values. That might seem like a lot of irrelevant theory, but as Vincent Bugliosi and Alan Dershowitz showed in their respective books about the Florida decision, not understanding that is why Gore's legal team missed several key points to stop the Supreme Court decision. You have to know the subtleties of the system in order to fight it. Buzz words like "police state" or "new world order" are no substitute, even though they may convey rational fear.

Finally, about the line that I'm better off writing articles about Limp Bizkit: in that piece, I cited something to illustrate a principle. I guess I've become hoisted by my own patois. Those who live by the pen will surely die by the mouse click. :)

As my friend Kath Williamson joked to me recently, you're damned if you do, and equally damned if you don't. And on the Web, everyone knows about it.

To quickly further answer a couple of things:

1. I hope people look at the arguments advanced in articles instead of a "like/dislike" reaction to the examples given.
2. In a "virtual space" we should be able to play with arguments, interpretations and possibilities instead of the more rigid "this is what I think" of other media.
3. I've referred to a lot of jargon without briefing many people on its background or application. We'll have a Dictionary of that soon. I'm not trying to be obscure, I'm trying to develop some "cognitive tools" to track mutating ideas across society.
4. Since I sometimes write Web articles to a tight deadline, I might not have a chance to "flesh-out" my arguments. Luckily, the Web enables you to revise material.

Wednesday, July 11, 2001

5:11 PM. I love lengthy feedback like the following from Julian G. "Uncle Sam":

Hey Alex, I've been visiting Disinfo for quite some time. But for the last, hmmm, several weeks, I've felt less and less attracted to the site and merely have been skimming through the newsletters. And I started thinking about sharing some of my thought about it since then but I never really couldn't get myself to do it until I read your newsletter on, errr, friday? I don't know, I accidently deleted it.

Anyways...

I read a lot about the Disinfo staff being big sell-outs who just want to make money and blah blah blah, same old story. I can't say i'm 100% amused by the pop-up window I get everytimes I log on disinfo.com but I can manage to suck it up. I think a lot of websites are becoming like that anyways. The rules of the game change and the free web is dying. My guess about this one is that we either have to re-invent the concept of work or all get sponsored by the porn industry (This offers many advantages in my opinion because they've got a lot of power and are some of the most relaxed people on this planet. You just can't offend someone of the porn industry because they got over the biggest taboo of all. So the hope resides in porn just like in '1984' where the hope resides in the proles).

But I don't really mind the advertising. Be it in hotmail or a website, I hardly ever see it anymore, as long as the site delivers. Which brings me to my next point. I don't think you'd receive such criticism for being sell-outs if your content still pleased the viewers. I know I've been disapointed a lot lately. Sometimes the only reason I visit is to see the articles from other sites you often link to.

My guess is that it comes from the fact that you mainly focus on more editorial content. It's cool to see someone elses' opinions, but everyone has their own anyways. Even if you put someone's opinion in front of your average viewer's eyes, it won't matter, they already have one. But you're probably familiar with the writings of Tim Leary and R.A. Wilson so you must know that if you want to change someone, only a shock can flip 'hem over and inside out.

Hearing that Americans were big bad evil persons during WW2 from Mickey Z is nice and fun at first, but it's hardly (dis)information. I think it's sufficient to know the Ford and Hitler would share common admiration for each others to know that the US were already rotted to the core back then. I also read in the newspaper (I think it's sometimes last week) an article about how the US knew about the concentration camps during WW2. If this type of news can reach us here (Québec city, Canada), then anything else revolving around the US being motherfuckers during WW2 goes from disinformation to 'oh well, doesn't amazes me'.

I think you get my point by now. Things are getting more extreme. Want to challenge one's reality? Give him/her unexpected. Talk about Mother Theresa's early porn career, Black helicopters that monitors what I eat for breakfast and the new trend of Aliens gang-banging people after probing them. Bring it to the extreme, impose a reality and add a large dose of sense of humor. Lie if you need to! Why not? It's disinformation. You've got a popular website with a lot of follower, it wouldn't be hard to trick a bunch of people by slipping a subtle lie between the lines. Give unexpected and people won't know what's what. But talking about why one should be a vegan is an old issue and everyone has made up their mind about it. Unless you say that being a vegan causes one's sexual potency to go sky-high, then it'd be another story.

Basically, my advice, if you want to keep the site popular, is to give people what they want. They want to be entertained, they want to learn something, they are angry, so they need to feel they're being lied to and they need sex, humor and violence. Package all of this into your content and i'm convinced traffic will flow into your site like never before.

So, that's about all I had to say. Hope that email helped somehow. If not, you can always give it a nice cozy place in your trash-can.

Take care,
Unclesam

This was a well-thought out and great e-mail: the idea that the Web's future lies with Danni Ashe or Rob Black is intriguing. Here's my uncensored reply:

Hi Julian,

Thanks for your candid thoughts and assessment of Disinfo, which I value. I don't think the "free Web" is dying: what's happening is a separation of personal/fan sites and those with an avowed business focus/model. The recent high-profile "crashes" have been by sites that have had great content, yet have failed to stick to business fundamentals. Visualize a tripod: content, distribution and finances. The Internet generates the second, which attracts the first, but to survive in the long-term the third aspect is needed (if you're a business-model site).

I value feedback on individual pieces: simply writing "I hate this piece" without explaining why or what you expected is no help: it's "white noise", not information. There's a small core of people who have felt that Disinfo has become too commercial: that's a lifecycle pattern, and some of these people have other personal agendas (such as being early Webmasters of "ghost sites"). What exactly have you been disappointed by? [My obscure still-in-progress articles? :)]

Individual judgment is affected by your experiences, values and worldview: a piece on Veganism might be "old news" or America's role in World War II might not be "disinformation" to you, but it might be to someone who has never considered it (and I got e-mails from people who felt so). As an Australian, none of the current anti-US sentiment is "disinformation" to me, but it is to others: you have to step out of your reference frame to perceive its limits (and to acknowledge your history as well as "newness"). An issue like WW II has more depth: there's a lot more than just knowing that Ford admired Hitler. Some of this turns up in mainstream media or university-level courses from time to time, and it's a sign that Disinfo's worldview has infiltrated mass consciousness. Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Hermann would say that the function of a propaganda system is that it gets talked about, but never fully confronted.

I like a lot of your ideas: humor, parody and entertainment are effective (it worked with an April Fool's piece). My limit as current editor is that simply pushing the "sex", "violence" and "humor" buttons doesn't cut it for me (and from personal experience it doesn't provide the "shock" that you're talking about: only a personal existential crisis can, and these are always uniqueto the individual, very private, and faced alone). "Anger" without focus will get a large audience but not direct it anywhere. "Sex" and "violence" for purely that is just pressing our evolutionary hot-buttons: what Rupert Murdoch did with Fox Television, right? It's easy to say that George W. Bush is a turkey, but after the self-congratulatory laughter has died away, we're not better off, are we? Still controlled, still passively half-awake.

Every site is a trade-off between the content "richness" and the audience "reach". The major sites have gone for "reach" in order to get a mass audience, which defeats "richness". When societal dynamics shift, there's always something more extreme, more angry (in 1997 it was Disinfo, in 2000 it was Stile Project).

Consider a rock band that has had a long history: the band didn't surf current trends, but stood for something apart from that. If you get identified with these cycles - such as Y2K/X-Files conspiracy, you've shortened your lifecycle. We would become just another business disguised as a "counterculture Web site", selling water by the river and profiting from people's delusions and short attention span (there's no single line crossed here, it's a spectrum). That's my view, not necessarily shared by other Disinfo people.

OK, so people know that they're being lied to and they're angry about it. A lot of "fringe" or "counterculture" details the different ways this is happening, yet doesn't offer solutions. And the solutions will be limited: surfing Disinfo is "orienting" yet no substitute for an integral practice like meditation or hatha yoga or intensive depth psychology. If you perceive that "Trojan Horse" aspect of Disinfo (and many people don't), you still have to do the Work. The reality is that only 3-5% of our readers will struggle with that innermost part of themselves: it's not always entertaining or sexy. Playing what Robert S. de Ropp called "the Master Game" is the hardest game, yet the only one worth ultimately playing.

Looking at the stats every day, I could please our audience with regular doses of "Sex", "Conspiracy" and "Mind Control" (and we need more in each section). It's the "God v Mammon" trip. And the struggle is how to create a proxemic environment for an "alchemical spell that rips a hole in the universe" while trying to be a profitable business, operate in the hyper-speed Web environment and meet your audience's expectations. Your feedback and thoughts are appreciated and are a great help.

Wednesday, July 4, 2001

9:10 AM. Many thanks to Paul Weiland for sending me a copy of Rollins' liner notes to the Deep Throat set. A riveting piece of self-disclosure.

11:15 AM. Slashdot has an intriguing piece on the Poverty of Attention. Rick Karr has named his Net Winners/Losers, and mentions that most people spend their time at sites owned by only 4 companies. Audio here: a very good report.

Tuesday, July 3, 2001

10:26 AM. Morning reading: the terribly exciting Harvard Business Review on Leadership. I have to know this stuff, but you still find unusual subtexts: John Kotter's suggestion that organizations create leaders by putting people into unusual situations is a technique that finds its mirror in postmodern initiatory practices.

1:58 PM. According to this story, the venerable Slashdot may be in trouble.

Monday, July 2, 2001

9:11 AM. Morning reading: Philip Evans and Thomas Wurser's book Blown to Bits: How the New Economics of Information Transforms Strategy (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). You can visit the authors' Web site and read their past articles.

The issue of reach (mass audience) versus richness (depth and originality of content) is relevant to Disinfo's editorial content. Sites like Salon have gone for reach in order to attract advertising and a wide readership, in contrast to op-ed journals like The Nation and The New Republic. Mini-sites like Newsmax's CommentMax are a compromise between the reach/rich trade-off.

2:11 PM. I hear that David Thrussell will be playing at MediaCircus.

5:36 PM. Crikey has an intriguing piece on "over-servicing" by Australian media-monitoring firm Rehame. And you thought this only happened in the US dotcom economy . . .

Friday, June 29, 2001

8:53 PM. I recently experienced several parallel universes when several colleagues and friends announced June marriages: Ken Wilber and Marci (re-read your copies of the One Taste diaries), Howard Bloom and award-winning journalist Dianne Petryk (July 4). The Disinfo team sends their congratulations to you all.

But my subjective universe really split into parallel ones when I got an e-mail from my old friend Jeremy Breaden, who had introduced me to Iron Maiden and AD&D, then disappeared to Japan on a prestigious government scholarship. He's getting married tomorrow (Saturday) to Yukimi Kano. Lucky girl.

I first met Breaden in my final primary school year, at Australia's Girton Grammar School (then called Girton College). He thought I was someone else (I've had that doppelganger effect again). When we both moved to Melbourne, I was invited to his Queens College residence where I set off a voice-mail impersonation of Henry Rollins (mentioning West German leader Willy Brandt), which sounded nothing like Rollins, but circulated for months (my first advertising virus?).

In the days when Australia was Terra Incognita for international tours, we'd trek to see Faith No More (where I ran into Mike Patton), the Rollins Band (several life-changing times), and a Metallica tour where Breaden ended up holding James Hetfield's drinking cup at the end of the night - our Holy Grail. He's also fluent in several languages, plays a mean bass/sax combo, worked for the progressive law firm Slater & Gordon, and was an A-grade student. Definately a Disinfonaut.

An e-mail can change lives forever. Just be careful with that trapezoid shard, Ms. Kano.

Thursday, June 13, 2001

6:56 PM. Showing again that it's the global conglomerate beyond the power of national governments, Microsoft has launched a renewed bid for dominating music streaming. That should fit right in with the bland music that passes for 'creative' in many dance clubs.

They won't publish porn, but Salon go for that angle in covering a 1920s photo collection of 'flappers'. But spare us any historical context (like Pre-Code Hollywood), we prefer to chase Urantia babes. Meanwhile, here’s some censorship of a far more disturbing nature.

Hate multi-level marketers? So do we: visit the Hall of Humiliation. A really successful agent (maybe Diamond or Platinum status) could take some time off while their untermenschen visit New Zealand to see Lord of the Rings before anyone else. Find out about the mysterious leader behind the California Institute of Abnormalarts. And The Holy Grail will be back in cinemas.

Finally, Jon Katz wrote an article on the Death of Net Magazines that has prompted some interesting discussion.

Wednesday, June 13, 2001

8:50 PM. An article on the death of the Australian Review of Books features an interesting line about Rupert Murdoch that could also apply to international readers: "Murdoch is some kind of devil figure who is out to take over the world and make all governments and media outlets his creatures . . . The shortsightedness of these fears can be illustrated by the history of newspapers, where dynasties have rarely lasted more than a couple of generations." And also a very relevant line about self-censorship by publications: "There is an appalling and stultifying conformism in Australian politico-intellectual life, such that publications which do not conform, or which seem hopelessly beyond the control of the conformists, are condemned and vilified."

The Lost Film Festival, which fuses digital media and anti-globalist activism memes, is touring the US. It’s like 1994 all over again.

Does credibility still matter in American newsrooms? The networks?battle over the RealityTV trend suggest that conglomerates are using journalists as 'flak' against the high-ratings programs of their competitors. Chuck D has posted a new Terrordome piece.

A great thought from Robert Fripp's diary entry for yesterday: "For me, there remains the distance between seeing what is possible, what is needed, and who, what & where we are."

Friday, June 8, 2001

9:53 AM. Scientists have discovered signs of a newly forming solar system. Interested in the scientific basis of optical illusions?

10:11 AM. "Privacy advocates get mad, but the resulting furore doesn't last very long," claims a Business 2.0 article. Maybe the Ivy League should listen to Bono:

"Rock music to me is rebel music," he said. "But rebelling against what? In the Fifties it was sexual mores and double standards, in the Sixties it was the Vietnam War and racial and social inequality. What are we rebelling against now? I'm rebelling against my own indifference. I'm rebelling against an idea that the world is the way the world is, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. So I'm trying to do a damn thing. But fighting my indifference is my own problem, what's your problem?"

11:21 AM. How Dreamworks SKG 'Worked the Web' for the movie AI: hire a lot of people to promote a video game, using viral marketing techniques. The savvy Netslaves crew covered this several years ago with their New Media Caste descriptions: the 'Cloudmakers Phenomenon' is really created by the Net's equivalent of 'social workers'. The 'New New' Hollywood (post AO-Hell/Time-Warner merger) is morphing the post-Taylorist 'learning organization' into its own mould. Here's why, despite the negative e-mails we receive, I don't feel overblown: Suck.com has announced a summer hiatus ("Our surveys indicate Web content in the year 2001 is the least competitive industry since Special Education. What else are you going to read? GettingIt? RequestLine? The Finger?"), and Salon is reportedly looking for a buyer. MTV is rumored to be falling apart (again), but who cares? I'm more annoyed by the tiny size of the excerpts from Brill’s Content. Why bother Steve, to entice your potential readership, if you’re only offering a single paragraph?

Thursday, June 7, 2001

11:30 AM. U2 singer Bono has asked Harvard University graduates to become committed to social activism. Mumia Abu-Jamal also gave a graduation speech-by-proxy. Australian expat journalist Christine Kenneally (we're covertly taking over Amerikka, I'm tellin' ya, but it's too late for Timothy McVeigh) has a great piece on what your brain looks like after your latest cocaine binge. Maybe she should have given the Harvard graduation speech . . .

12:56 PM. Employers are beginning to wonder if spying on their employees and employing hackers is such a good idea. 'They' discovered that we were addicted to Magic Robot adventures, while waiting for broadband to arrive. Is there a trend here in abdicating responsibility? Michelle Cottle suggests so, in her analysis of The Prayer of Jabez craze that is sweeping America:

Yes, Wilkinson lifts themes and language from empowerment gurus and success coaches, but his central point is that there is no inner power or strength that we must struggle to tap. The key to success in life--material as well as spiritual--is simply to give it all up to God. Talent doesn't matter. (God has always preferred the weak.) Confidence doesn't matter. (The Father loves dependence.) Setting goals is in fact a sin. (It's all about God's will.) In an age worn thin by its obsession with "personal responsibility," Wilkinson gives us a blueprint for being good--even godly--even as he relieves us from the risk, pressure, and guilt that go along with personal responsibility. Then he guarantees immediate results.

Does this mean that 1 Chronicles 4:9-10 will become the hip Bible quote after how Quentin Tarantino used Ezekiel 25-17 in Pulp Fiction?

Wednesday, June 6, 2001

10:12 AM. The LA Weekly has a review of the new Motley Crue biography, The Dirt. I was never a Crue fan, but this is a revealing look at the harsh reality of artist management and what it takes to survive in the music industry (just ask Spinal Tap).

11:13 AM. Iridium is struggling back from the dead: the company is offering satellite data services. Speaking of talking with the dead, Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic, has an eye-opening article, exposing how psychics like John Edwards and James Van Praagh. Both rely on 'cold reading'.

1:23 PM. The Pentagon's anti-fraud division was caught faking documents to pass an audit. Will this revive the bogus Majestic 12 documents?

3:41 PM. Don Hazen, editor of Alternet, has discovered the 13 scariest white guys in America. If you're still worrying about some US politician named Jeffords, go immediately to CounterPunch. Our pal Dan Forbes has an intriguing piece on why George W. Bush has escalated the U.S. War on Some Drugs:

One huge private company in particular is in the drug war up to its neck. According to National Defense (a trade publication for defense contractors), DynCorp, a $1.4 billion a year, 20,000-employee government contractor based in Reston, Virginia, "supports drug war operations at both the front and back ends -- from airborne crop-dusting in Colombia to asset forfeiture experts who work at 385 Justice Department sites in the United States." That's right, South America's favorite mercenaries help the feds seize property here at home.

4:34 PM. The latest Military Review has a piece by US Army Lt. Col (ret) Timothy L. Thomas on China's Electronic Strategies. Meanwhile, the Seattle Times reports that the Ruby Ridge sniper may be prosecuted. The next report is about how microchip implants are being used to track salmon. Do you ever experience conspiracy fatigue?

5:14 PM. Richard Metzger raves about the City of (Angles (Angles if you're a Lovecraft fan). After reading this article, I can't stop laughing.

Tuesday, June 5, 2001

10:34 AM. Crikey, the Australian political and media watchdog, has a great piece on PR ethics. And a great piece on how a magazine re-design went wrong for Australia's Business Review Weekly. News.com is running a three-part series with the portentous title of The Death of the Free Net. There's also an article on "premium" subscription schemes, micro-payments and the dotc-com crunch. The New Yorker has a great piece by Ken Auletta on Inside.com's real subscription audience figures. Meanwhile, Jim Romenesko's Media News covers what it's like to edit The Nation on a weekly basis, and considers the possibility that corporations may "save" newspapers, not kill them off.

4:04 PM. Slashdot yesterday ran a great piece on the Stanford Social Web, which "calculates social interactions of members of the Stanford University network, using links and text from home pages, as well as information about mailing list subscriptions. Though the site's analysis of user relationships and similarities is limited to those with Stanford accounts, it is of interest to those studying the formation of social networks." Check out our Howard Bloom and Muzafer Sherif dossiers for more info on how networks affect our everyday social life. Bloom spent the early and mid-1980s working with several heavy metal bands. You can read the first chapter of musicologist Chuck Klosterman's book Fargo Rock City and the New York Times review.

6:44 PM. The Gurdjieff Legacy site has an interesting essay on Gurdjieff and Money. William Patrick Patterson's bi-weekly quote from Gurdjieff resonates with the Dotcom Crash:

As in general, on none of the planets of our great Universe does there or can there exist enough of everything required for everybody's equal external welfare, irrespective of what are called 'objective-merits,' the result there is that the prosperity of one is always built on the adversity of many.

9:12 PM. The Los Angeles Times reports that youth are being targetted in Iran's upcoming election. Meanwhile, Iraq is trying to change OPEC's policy on oil exports, but will America care?

Monday, June 4, 2001

1:34 PM. A note to our valued Disinfo.net customers: you may briefly experience log-in problems (User ID/Password accepted, but the frontpage refreshes), as our e-mail host is updating scripting on their servers. Go to Chek Inc to access your e-mail. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you, and thanks for using our services.

Friday, June 1, 2001

2:32 PM. No, I am not the "Alex Burns" (male model/personal trainer) who is dating Pearl Harbor star James King. Damn!

Wednesday, May 30, 2001

9:04 AM. Mickey Z had a great article on the film Pearl Harbor published at ZNet over the weekend. Our friends at Soft Skull Press forwarded it all over the globe. Edward Hermann also has a great three-part piece on Israel's ethnic cleansing policies.

Tuesday, May 29, 2001

9:57 AM. Kariwa, a tiny Japanese village, has upset Japan's multi-billion dollar nuclear fuel industry. Embryo computers have arrived. "Can becomes ought"? Meanwhile, Beijing has dropped plans for an AIDS patient concentration camp.

Monday, May 28, 2001

9:10 AM. Morning reading: Erich Fromm's groundbreaking study The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1973). I found a great rant on Fromm and Dr. Tim that you should check out. He also turns up on an unusual site about Orwellian control of America's money supply.

10:11 AM. C.M. Low replies:

And yet, it seems that's all you ever do... Besides, that's not my job, and I have more important things to worry about. I'm afraid you're just going to have to figure something out for yourself.

I don't need to "figure something out": I asked you to back-up your assertions with some examples, instead of narcissistic sandbox politics.

And to be honest, I really don't care about Disinfo. If you think that I do, you're kidding yourself.

Your negative attitude has been evident for several months. I don't care about you: you're a minority. But I do value intelligent feedback.

I used to like it, though, and it's really sort of disappointing (and an insult to my intelligence) when I need to put up with flashing banner ads that line articles devoted solely to telling me that Limp Bizkit is stupid.

The article is about how record company executives are tapping into values changes and inter-generational conflicts. It used a Limp Bizkit/NiN conflict as an understandable example. I'm not going to apologize for using such examples to get across research that many people find esoteric. I don't like Durst or Limp Bizkit either.

It seems you at Disinfo have shifted your focus from giving real information to post-secondary intellectuals towards telling 15-year-old trend whores what they ought to buy, thus making you at Disinfo trend whores yourselves (not to mention money whores) and leaving people like me scratching our heads.

We perceive our own perceptions. What do you "expect" of us?

Disinfo, like many sites, has been losing money. We made the decision to affiliate with Amazon for pragmatic reasons. We're involved in a lot of other projects and activist issues off-line. So, we're not "money whores", nor have we become "trend whores" as you allege. People might dislike individual articles or even specific writers, but we aim for a diversity. Most of our visitors understand this, and let us become who we are (rather than expect us to live up to their expectations of "disinformation", "counterculture" or whatever other conceptual box they want to throw us in).

I have nothing against you personally; it's the company you work for that I've grown to dislike. My advice to you is to get out now before we do. And believe me: we will.

Razorfish Subnetworks has never affected our editorial voice. Go ahead: please move on. I won't miss your "criticism", nor your inflated self-importance.

3:23 PM. Russ Kick has updated his excellent alterNewswire site. Australia has been officially named as part of Echelon. It's the most exciting thing to happen here since Stanley Kramer filmed On The Beach or the mid-1980s protests at Pine Gap. The entire report has been posted by Cryptome. Melbourne parents can now secretly test their children for illegal drugs. Andrew Marr has proclaimed the death of the novel.

6:16 PM. Searching for more alternative media critiques? Check out Deborah Lagarde's page on "Media Issues" at Suite 101.

7:35 PM. The SD & Aeons thread continues at BeastBay. I have my own thoughts on this. Several years ago, Don Webb wrote an essay on Set and Aeons that offers a different perspective to Xnoubis' essay. Worth checking out if aeonics interests you. A healthy skepticism is encouraged.

Sunday, May 27, 2001

1:52 PM. C.M. Low writes regarding our Webby Awards nomination:

"yeah, uh...

the thing is, websites nominate themselves for these so-called "awards". in fact, they pay for the honour... so it's not really like being nominated in an election; it's more like buying a raffle ticket."

Where's your source for this claim?

Disinformation has never paid for any of the nominations or awards that we've received, and the Webby nominees go through several nomination stages before the final group in each category is announced. No "contra" or "payola" involved:

Webby Awards Judging Criteria

I can appreciate that some people view our nomination as a cynical move, and the Webbys as worthless. But look at it this way: when you purchase a Rage Against The Machine album, or a Noam Chomsky book, or a copy of Z Magazine or Mother Jones (to give some examples), you're helping support a network of people and helping to spread ideas/worldviews that don't get a hearing.

With all due respect, talking about "revolution" and how the "new Disinfo is crap" without offering any vision of your own or what we "should" be doing, strikes me as rather pointless.

2:52 PM. Milo writes:

In a couple of your postings lately, you've snubbed the concept, or the supposed demographic, of cultural creatives. I don't know much about them, other than it sounds like just a book turned catchphrase (Iron John/ Men's movement, gen-x, et al.). I mean, to read the definition on their website, I could think of being called worse. A "Bobo" is sufficiently explained and criticized on your site and elsewhere. There's not much in the way of additional criticism on the web about CCs (if I can't find it within ten minutes, then it's below my neuronal-firing threshhold.) You claim they've "sold out?" What did they have to to sell? Care to elaborate?

The Cultural Creatives are the name given to 50 million Americans by and Sherry Ruth Anderson. Read their book The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World (Harmony, 2000). Because we're dealing with "deep thinking/values systems" within people and not surface typologies, CCs cut across demographic, generational, political and subculture divides.

Ken Wilber offers some criticisms of Ray and Anderson's research, which I still think excellent, and a good way to get people thinking about values and everyday life.

Gen Xers who became Dot.com obsessed Bo-Bos may have "sold out" their early '90s grunge/indie roots (remember the funeral scene from My Own Private Idaho?). Gen-X Cultural Creatives, on the other hand, didn't "sell out", but matured into a group that the demographers failed to predict.

3: 18 PM. Remember those Faces of Death videos? Well, Los Angeles Times gives you the real thing: wedding schadenfreude in Israel (24 people died and hundreds were injured). You can watch RealVideo and Quicktime versions. And learn why public radio is getting more advertorial with each passing day.

Friday, May 25, 2001

9:39 AM. Today is "Don't Forget Your Towel Day" in memory of Douglas Adams. Check out the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series (I saw the BBC's 1981 television series first). File under: seminal personal influence.

9:45 AM. NetSlaves wonders: "What if Jim Morrison was a Net CEO?". Another great piece on 22 Toxic Internet Business Myths (there is no 23rd, apparently). Bill Lessard's piece on how freelancers get by for food, cuts close to the bone. I rely on fresh produce markets (and the William S. Burroughs trick of coffee). Robert Fripp once gave his audience some advice: "When you're feeling really depressed, go and have the best meal that you can afford." His advice works.

1:27 PM. TiVo has been granted a patent for its personal video recorder hardware and software. You can read the patent for its "multimedia time warping system" and listen to TiVo's conference call. Is this the future of digital television?

6:52 PM. Damien Gaffney writes:

What are you people actually searching for? Your somewhat scientific skepticism struck an interesting chord with me early on, I respect anyone who has the courage to determine answers for themselves. However, over several months of reading your articles and browsing your topics, I can only say I have never seen a more profound example of pure, pointless, alienation. What good is dialogue if it leads to no truth? especially if it leads to confusion among people with little benefit of education. Mindless fear and disregard for science dominate your features and help reduce young minds to rubble. Absolute skepticism is an attractive thing, but it is neither necessary nor good. Only with a dedication to truth will science and skepticism produce real results. With your destructive mission, you become purveyors of chaos.

Assuming anybody even reads this, I hope it might generate a reply. you organization retains such an impressive stock of skeptics and progressive ideals as to have immense potential for good.

I don't believe we stand for "pure, pointless, alienation": I've made countless suggestions in our daily newsletter, "Welcome to the Machine" blogger, "Personal Mutations" series, the Expanded Spiral Dynamics Bibliography and elsewhere for constructive practices. We've also featured thinkers like Howard Bloom, Robert Wright, Riane Eisler and Ken Wilber. We seek to do/stand for the Good.

What kind of truth are you talking about? We distrust "grand narratives" and blind adherence to dogma and societal truths, but we do value what Plato called dianoia (reason) and noesis (perception of archetypal Forms of Truth, Justice, Beauty etc). Love of truth (philosophe) cannot be forced onto minds who do not want it. We challenge people to examine their (often unconscious) worldviews. That includes why people justify certain values in the first place, and what their perception of truth is.

We mistrust "scientism" and what Daniel C. Dennett called "greedy reductionism", but appreciate the empirical scientific worldview and skeptical thinking. Contemporary scientists, such as those aligned with John Brockman's Third Culture highlight how progressive and broad science can be. We will be covering more of these people in the future.

These values can be subtle, and may not be evident from our site's aesthetics and imagery, or from individual writers. Taken as a totality, these progressive values are there, and we're honing them. Thanks for your feedback.

Thursday, May 24, 2001

9:40 AM. Red Herring has an interesting scenarios piece by Peter Schwartz on the New Economy and the status of The Long Boom. Schwartz has been a major influence on my own scenarios research; he's affiliated with the Global Business Network and wrote the excellent book The Art of the Long View (New York: Doubleday/Currency, 1991).

Wednesday, May 23, 2001

9:02 AM. In a move reminiscent of Nazi social stratification policies, the Taliban have decreed that Hindus must wear identification labels. The New Yorker has a neat profile of legendary game designer Lord British. Associated Press reports that school districts are using software to track students. Melbourne's Age newspaper reports that the Australian government has ordered another inquest into the Maralinga nuclear tests, conducted with the British in the 1950s. A little known fact about the Maralinga nuclear tests: the sites were at geographical distances, that when transposed from the Australian land mass to Europe, would give a model of how cities would be affected by the drift of nuclear fall-out. Ain't colonialism great?

Tuesday, May 22, 2001

8:42 AM. Wired News details an important First Amendment victory for radio. A Salon correspondent gets kicked out of the Hot d'or porn awards at Cannes. David Horowitz, my ex-SDS pal, is convinced there's a "fascist" campus plot to ruin conservatives. And Amazon(once was .com) is still finding "stealth tactics" to try and turn a profit. And some people still wonder why I'm not in a hurry to move to the States.

9:05 AM. Z Net has an article by Michael Albert on the mainstream media linking anarchism exclusively with John Zerzan. Leonard Peltier has also spoken about the FBI.

9:51 AM. Business 2.0 has two interesting articles on the arrival of wireless video and the prospects for digital cinema. Make that three articles: one on WB Insider Gizmo's viral campaign as well. Meanwhile, a change in Life Conditions means that the 5000 year old Marsh Arabs culture of Southern Iraq is on the verge of extinction.

10:20 AM. Chuck D has written in his Terrordome column (May 10, 2001) about the threats facing hip-hop music in its 22nd year. Meanwhile, Foreign Policy magazine is uncovering some real terrors: the May 2001 edition features articles on money laundering, women peace negotiators and an unlikely cure for America's economic crises. The editors must have been terrified though: they didn't print the cover story on McDonald's nor the debate between Robert Wright and Robert Kaplan.

9:50 PM. Don't forget tonight's "Evening of Mental Insurrection" at New York City's Tonic Club, in association with Soft Skull Shortwave. Mickey Z, Nick Mamatas and Preston Peet will read from their "You Are Being Lied To" contributions, and we'll show some "Disinfo Nation" stuff. And Genesis P-Orridge is our Master of Ceremonies (or is that Master of Wisdom?). Fun starts 8 PM. Be there or be a Vogon.

Monday, May 21, 2001

9:02 AM. Morning reading: Rudy Rucker's book Infinity and The Mind: The Science and Philosophy of the Infinite (Boston: Birkhauser, 1982). A possible solution ("Mindscape", "transfinite consciousness", "interface initiation") to the initiatory problem presented by H.P. Lovecraft in his short story "Through the Gates of the Silver Key". Faced with a new stage of life development, protagonist Randolph Carter undergoes an Ordeal during which he experiences an expansion of consciousness and space-time sense to encompass past, future and alternate lives. Unable to contain this vast panorama of information, his psyche transmutates into a form that fuses both prior and subsequent stages of psychological development. Rucker hints that an unprepared psyche that perceives infinity (in a limited sense) may suffer the fate of mathematician Georg Cantor.

9:45 AM. Alternet.org has an eye-opening interview with Barbara Ehrenreich about America's hidden poverty. The mayor of Wellington (New Zealand) is planning a Lord of the Rings theme park. And hand-scanning technology has been introduced to monitor employee movements at two Melbourne racecourses.

Why didn't I discover this five years ago? Jack Lynch's paper How to Get an A on an English paper. He also has a neat section on grammar and style.

3:31 PM. Monday afternoon is my ninety minute hatha yoga session. Aleister Crowley had some interesting things to say about these practices. You might also want to read the Shiva Sanyita and the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. Right now I'm feeling very refreshed, although I almost fell asleep during the deep relaxation exercise. Interestingly, our teacher began the session with an explanation of Paul MacLean's discovery of the triune brain. MacLean's work is now used to describe the epigenetic evolution of spiritual consciousness, cult conversion, persuasion and the Enneagram. Got a lot of Work done in the past hour, too.

8:36 PM. Ironminds has an interesting review of the new Tool album Lateralus.

9:12 PM. Rolling Stone reports that Chris Cornell is working again with Rage Against The Machine. The Los Angeles Times has a nice story on the end of Star Trek: Voyager and further details of Votescam 2K. And The Nation has really important pieces on the National Defense Shield and what the latest McVeigh foul-up could mean for the FBI.

Friday, May 18, 2001

12:26 PM. Media theorists like Douglas Rushkoff have mentioned how Channel One has infiltrated high schools with advertising. Commercial Alert, a group established by Ralph Nader, plans to fight this disturbing trend. Neil Postman redux?

12:36 PM. The ever-productive Russ Kick has updated alterNewswire. Check it out y'all.

12:42 PM. Scary News dept. OJ has a new career: advising actor Robert Blake, whose wife was recently shot. More Columbine deliberations. And most scary news of the day (so far): US Defense Secretary Donald "Ditch Detente" Rumsfield is considering pulling out of the 1972 ABM Treaty with Russia. Maybe George Lucas will film that third Star Wars trilogy after all: the real thing. Pity the New Zealand campaign to get the "Jedi religion" recognised on the Census was a failure.

12:55 PM. The Lone Gunmen has been axed by Fox. Writing comedy is hard (television schedules demand a new episode every 8 days), which is probably why Chris Carter & Co went for slapstick. My spec script would have been considered too serious - a return to the dark mythos of the first three X-Files series.

Thursday, May 17, 2001

9:52 PM Todd Knapp writes:

Hello there,

I recently read your piece on G.I. Gurdjieff. I would like to know how you substantiate your claim that Gurdjieff utilized "...'stolen' teachings." Could you cite your evidence for this notion?
Just Curious

Todd:

I use the word 'stolen' in a specific sense: Gurdjieff created a dynamic synthesis from many spiritual traditions, including Sufi (Bektashi, Naqshbandiyya), Zoroasterian, Russian Orthodox Christian and other sources. He did so, some argue, without the explicit permission of Traditionalist sources and organizations (this is still debated). This is evident from his books Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson and Meetings With Remarkable Men, and is accepted by many people influenced by his ideas. He also used "cultural scripts" of his time, critiquing the popularity of Occult/Theosophy and Freudian psychoanalysis: the former created "candidates for asylums" and the latter was viewed as a form of autohypnosis.

George Baker and Jacob Needleman's anthology Gurdjieff: Essays and Reflections on The Man and His Teachings (New York: Continuum Publishing Group, 1996) is an excellent place to start.

Regards,

Alex Burns

Wednesday, May 16, 2001

1:02 PM. Rolling Stone has two CD reviews worth checking out: the new Depeche Mode album Exciter and the new Tool album Lateralus. More musical nightmares: Poison are back. Wired News has a great story on film special effects, and the return of DJ Grandmaster Flash (well, OK, he never really went away). Our friend Howard Bloom was Grandmaster Flash's upscale PR agent in the early 1980s. Quality life-changing product. See, Howard was never, as far as I know, connected with the Eurovision Song Contest, thank the gods (or goddesses: remember what Timothy Leary said about the benefits of digital polytheism?).

I spent the morning as a stand-in for a video-taped interview project on Health Information Management services (medical clerk records). It was intriguing to explore an alternate reality for a few hours: a road not taken.

6:14 PM. I've been updating some more Disinfo dossiers, including Memetic Engineering, The Military-Nintendo Complex, Amazon: Unionbusters.com? and Anarchy For Sale: Dead Kennedys v Jello Biafra & ATR. New links and additions to the articles: no wonder Richard Metzger called this work "updating the bottomless pit."

Tuesday, May 15, 2001

9:43 AM. Professor Jared Diamond is touring Australia. Check out his excellent book Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W.W. Norton and Co, 1999).

10:02 AM. Wanna work for a progressive and creative New Media company? We're looking for an intern:

The Disinformation Company needs a forward thinking, motivated intern to work full or part time in its Manhattan offices. The successful applicant will participate in a wide range of exciting projects in television production, motion picture development, web site production and book publishing. This is not a paid position but we will be happy to help with obtaining college credit. Please send resumes and cover letters to jobs@disinfo.com.

3:23 PM. Fast Company reveals the genesis of the Bar Code Nation. Time for me to update our old dossier.

5:44 PM. Salon has an article about the return of the band Tesla. I want to go on record that this is a band I detested, having spent a year in Boarding School hearing Five Man Acoustic Jam endlessly (namelessly). The real Tesla was far cooler. They make up for it with a moving remembrance of Douglas Adams (file under "seminal personal influence"). Meanwhile, this is the kind of "family values" I like: Australian Federal Finance minister John Fahey quits. Maybe he should have tried med-mar treatment instead . . .

5:54 PM. I've updated a few dossiers today, including Robert Anton Wilson.

9:28 PM. Encylclopedia Britannica has a cool gallery of space pictures, called Looking to the Heavens, on its front-page today. Slashdot.org reports that Australia's unsuccessful Internet censorship laws have the country cost $2.5 million. Richard Dawkins has penned a lament to Douglas Adams.

Monday, May 14, 2001

9:12 AM. ®™ark are having a benefit for James Baumgartner, who has racked up over $10,000 in legal fees because his satirical site Voteauction.com was sued by the Chicago Board of Elections. The leading 21st Century corporate consultancy write: "Join us for a friggin' raft of prank videos - plus a half-hour set of Negativland music videos - towards his free speech defense." The emergency benefit is on Saturday May 19th at Other Cinema/ATA Gallery, 992 Valencia Street, San Francisco. Phone: 415-824-3890. Door: $5.50.

10:05 AM. Michael Albert has posted an overview of Anarchism at Z Net. With news that the FBI witheld evidence from Timothy McVeigh's trial, conspiracy theories are enjoying a new lease of life. The specter of OKBomb rears its head again . . .

10:18 AM. Remember how Indonesians committed human rights atrocities in East Timor? Civilians are again being targeted as "collateral damage" in the Indonesian province of Aceh.

10:40 AM. Guns 'N' Roses have cancelled their planned European tour. Why am I not surprised? Can't wait for the "Downed Spyplane" remix of Chinese Democracy, their much-rumored but never-released next album.

11:11 AM. Tricky has a new album due, called Blowback. You can listen to a preview.

3:44 PM. If you're enjoying our new book "You Are Being Lied To", get ready for:

You Are Being Lied To: An Evening Of Mental Insurrection

Presented by The Disinformation Company Ltd and Soft Skull Shortwave.

@Tonic/Soft Skull Shortwave
Tuesday, May 22nd, 2001
107 Norfolk St, New York City
(Between Delancey & Rivington "F" train to Delancey)
(212) 254-0787
Starts 8PM sharp. The cost of this event is $8.

Genesis P-Orridge is our Master of Ceremonies.

Michael Zezima (Mickey Z), Preston Peet, and Nick Mamatas will read from their work/panel discussion.

We'll also be showing excerpts from the two "Disinfo Nation" series, screened in the US, including:

?"Brice Taylor: Mind Controlled Sex Slave" (12 min)
?"Sympathy for the Devil"--an "expose" of Satanic cult activity in America (10 min)
?"RocketBoy: Space Mercenary of the Universe" (4 min)
?"Thanaton III": Paul Laffoley explains how his most famous painting is actually alive. (5 min)

Starring at 10pm, Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir.

Hope we can see you there!

7:56 PM. Feed Magazine has an intriguing article that links fatty acids to schizophrenia.

Friday, May 11, 2001

2:56 PM. Baz Luhrman has conquered Cannes with his new film Moulin Rouge. He insists that the film is Australian, despite American financial backing. This is really important, since Australia (notably Sydney and Queensland's Gold Coast) has increasingly become a backlot for Hollywood pictures. Melbourne has missed out on the film studio bonanza, but you can check out where I live through the following films: the inner-city skinheads of Romper Stomper (1993), which starred some actor named Russell Crowe, and director Geoffrey Wright's next film, Metal Skin; the suburban comedy The Castle (1999); the sassy Melbourne University students in Emma Kate-Croghan's Love & Other Catastrophes (1997); Proof (1991) and Death in Brunswick (1990). Also worth checking out is The Interview (1998), starring Hugo Weaving. Go and annoy your video store now.

3:24 PM. The dot-com documentary Startup.com is out. It's about the GovWorks.com fiasco. Chris Hegedus and Jehane Noujaim have talked about their role as documentary filmmakers. Hedegus and D.A. Pennebaker's previous film, The War Room (1993), an "insider" look at Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign, is definately worth checking out. Just in time for my Politics & Media class: stories on broadband deregulation and fibre-optic cable. Gotta love the Web for research purposes.

4:49 PM. The original Black Sabbath line-up are recording a new album. Put "Sweet Leaf" on the stereo and crank up the volume to 11.

6:47 PM. Scared of cookies? Discover the Customer Service Agenda. C'mon, get happy. Disbelieve customer service consultants.

Thursday, May 10, 2001

9:39 AM. Sequel mania has hit Hollywood. Anyone in the biz want to look at my nascent film scripts? Meanwhile, Preston Peet tells me that MI5 may have Radiohead's Thom Yorke under surveillance. Shows what supporting a bunch of anti-globalists will do. Yorke reportedly said to MI5: "We used those laptops you keep losing to complete work on our new album Amnesiac."

6:45 PM. Rolling Stone has a cool REM profile for their new album Reveal. V. Vale of the mighty publishers RE/Search-V/Search has posted a very thoughtful essay about the recent Dead Kennedys lawsuit. Definately check this one out.

6:56 PM. Our friends Tool will release the much anticipated album Lateralus on March 15. Click here to check out the album cover and read the lyrics. And make sure you call your local radio station and ask them to play "Schism", the first single.

7:15 PM. Another Australian first: a cloned pig. Can the scientists clone the pig's snuggle factor, though?

7:27 PM. Sean Healy tells me that Cold Cut have a new single/video out, "Guilty Party", for the UK elections. Also check out Schnews, the weekly newsletter from Brighton's Direct Action collective.

8:22 PM. Business 2.0 has interesting articles on viral ad parodies, and how George Lucas dealt with a fan Web site.

8:27 PM. Marilyn Manson is conducting the keynote speech for New Music West on Friday.

8:30 PM. We're big fans of Stuart Kauffman at Disinfo. Click here for a live discussion with Kauffman, at noon US EST today (Thursday), to hear about how complexity theory reshapes the way scholars examine evolution, economics and other disciplines. Riveting stuff.

Wednesday, May 9, 2001

8:40 AM. I'm interviewing Australian DJ David Thrussell this afternoon for a profile in Artbyte magazine. When he's not spearheading the International Mind Control Corporation's bid for world domination (we had to run into IMCC one of these days, as Disinfo has the same goal), Thrussell hosts a show on Melbourne's PBS radio station. Tune in between 11AM and 1PM each Wednesday, Melbourne local time. Check here if you don't know the international time difference. Snog is playing at Convergence 7 in New York City between August 17-19, 2001.

10:48 AM. If you've read the Wired News coverage of the Narco News libel trial, make sure you read Preston Peet's trial coverage and subsequent interview with Al Giordano. The different coverage reveals how the sources that the journalist quotes will shape the piece's voice. Ben Badikian argues that newspapers rely on "official" sources such as prestigious banks and business leaders, at the expense of others. Well, what if the prestigious banks and business leaders are the ones covering up their crimes? What happens to "objective journalism" then?

11:15 AM. Jon Katz of Slashdot.org has posted an interesting article on Steganography. Over at The New Republic, Mario Vargas Llosa argues that the obituary for literature is premature. Franklin Bruno has written a great piece for Feed Magazine on The DJ's New Lexicon. Benjamin L. McKean, at The Nation, reveals the hidden battle behind the Harvard University protests: "Harvard pays more than 1,000 workers poverty wages while sitting on an endowment of almost $20 billion."

Tuesday, May 8, 2001

10:57 AM. Richard Metzger wrote me that The Doobie Brother's guitarist Jeff "Skunk" Baxter is one of the Bush Administation's experts on missile defense systems. Marilyn Manson is being urged not to play in Denver, Colorado (they're right: he should tour Australia, instead!). Kurt Gray has penned a moving Dotcom Crunch story. And, the anti-globalist juggernaut is soon to hit Hong Kong. Just another Tuesday.

11:19 AM. If you were hungry for one of those Cakes of Light, BeastBay (a Slashdot.org for Thelemites) will set you straight on what they are, and how they relate to Aleister Crowley's gnostic eucharist. NBC has a new JonBenet Inc story. We prefer The Konformist.

11:38 AM. Can religion and science co-exist in the 21st century? Check out this discussion, hosted by the Hoover Institute, available as multiple streams and as a transcript.

7:01 PM. Kenn Thomas has penned a very moving piece in memory of Ron Bonds, publisher of Illuminet Press. I didn't know Bonds personally, but he revitalized the conspiriology field with some of its most intriguing books and writers.

7:09 PM. Sara Aronson sent me a really great Flash movie called Sweet Peep. Not only does it feature some great morphs and scene transitions; Sweet Peep is probably the most emotionally satisfying short film that I've seen in a long time. Definately check it out.

Monday, May 7, 2001

7:47 PM. Tom Beller, Nick Mamatas and Richard Metzger wrote me about a devastating fire at The Baffler magazine.Here's how you can help:

Our friends at The Baffler Magazine have suffered a terrible setback; the building housing their offices has burned down. What follows is a note from the editors about the state of affairs, and a suggestion by one of their contributors as to how to procede.

Dear Friend of The Baffler:

On the morning of April 25th, our office and the unique building in which it was housed were destroyed in a fire. In addition to the Baffler office, the building was home to a close community of artists, writers, nonprofit organizations, and small businesses. No one was injured in the fire, but the physical damage was extensive. Worse, however, was the devastation of a vital center of cultural activity.

We're struggling to cope with our losses and those of our friends. We have set up a temporary office and will do our best to publish Baffler #14 (which was sent to the printer a week before the fire) as scheduled. It now appears that our subscriber list is recoverable, so we are hopeful that everyone will get their copy of the magazine. For now, though, we have no computers, no contact lists, no rolodexes, no desks, and no desk lamps.

We and our friends are determined to rebuild and recover, but we need help. For those who can, please send donations made out to The Baffler Recovery Fund to:

The Baffler Magazine P. O. Box 378293 Chicago, IL 60637

Donations are tax-deductible.

In-kind help would also be greatly appreciated. We're hoping we can score a few iMacs mothballed in the warehouses of northern California after the dot-com ankruptcies of recent months. Or, on the humbler, more second-wave side, just some file cabinets, or desks, or carpets, or one of those huge unabridged dictionaries.

Let us know if you can help with any of these. And, as our e-mail lists are incomplete, please forward this message to anyone you know who would be interested.

7:51 PM. There's a war going on between Salon and Slate about audience figures. For those of you who can stomach SEC filings, here's some details Salon's recent outline of its Premium service:

Beginning in April 2001, Salon will seek to convert 1% to 2% of its approximately 3.5 million monthly readers to a premium subscription program called Salon Premium, charging $30 per year and generating an estimated $900,000 to $1.8 million in cash for Salon during its first year. Salon's premium service will offer readers access to exclusive new content; the option to view Salon.com content without advertising banners and pop-ups; access to select unabridged content that is currently offered for free (abridged versions will continue to be available free for non-subscribers) and the ability to easily download our content in text format, a convenience that will enable readers to view additional Salon articles when not connected to the Internet. We believe that Salon is one of the few Web sites whose readers are numerous, affluent and devoted enough to make this premium strategy succeed.

Salon currently generates over $500,000 revenue per year from its consumers through its fee-based online community, The Well. The Well's customer service operation software will be utilized to service Salon Premium subscribers in April 2001.

Salon has also published three books, "Mothers Who Think" (Villard) based on its popular parenting department, "The Salon Readers Guide to Contemporary Literature" (Viking Penguin) and "Wanderlust: Real-Life Tales of Adventure and Romance" (Random House). In addition, Salon's large volume of original, proprietary content offers the Company new revenue opportunities as the e- publishing and print-on-demand markets mature.

So, are we planning a premium service, like Salon and Fucked Company? We'll be keeping a majority of Disinfo's content free, but are working on a few ideas and future projects, that we hope you will find interesting/useful enough to pay for.

7:57 PM. Sara Aronson sent me a link to a great Flash movie called JetMonkey in the 21st Century, featuring a guest appearance by Galactic Chicken. It's very cool. Some of the battle sequences remind me of Battlestar Galactica, the kitsch 1970s sci-fi series.

8:26 PM. Salon has an interesting article about how past Russian totalitarianism has shaped a nihilistic present. The ever-productive Z Magazine team have released a talk by Noam Chomsky about the Prospects for Peace in the Middle East. And Inside.com reports that Rosa Parks, the legendary civil rights activist, is in a lawsuit with the band Outkast, over a single.

8:33 PM. This month's Brill's Content (May 2001) has a great issue about Internet sites and portals. If you're interested in tracking trends, it's worth purchasing. Our friends at Bust Magazine get a 'rave' review from Brill's editorial team. Check out the latest issue of Bust at your news stand.

8:59 PM. Timothy McVeigh has chosen a guest for his execution: Gore Vidal. Meanwhile, Slashdot.org mentions a site that is tracking every BBS that ever was, and finding strange triple allegories in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Looks like the author got lost in his cryptic writings and forgot to heed the Balance Factor.

Monday, April 30, 2001

7:46 PM. I wrote the following in today's newsletter: "The M1 protests will occur in Melbourne tomorrow. So, it was interesting to note the following line about the Internet and activism in the Reuters press release about the Webbys:

"Among the 27 awards to be handed out this year will be ones for "activism" that focus on anti-globalization street protesters, and animal rights and nonprofit sites while ignoring other shades of political and social opinion." Gee, wouldn't want to admit that these "activists" (note the brackets) might have a point, or have a broad basis of support in the Internet community, would we? Just another example of how prejudices and frames-of-reference slip into everyday language."

This comment elicited the following response from Daniel Kian McKiernan:

Perhaps you intend to be ironic in writing

Just another example of how prejudices and frames-of-reference slip into everyday language.

but it at least -appears- that the frame-of-reference problem is yours.

Reuters puts the term "activism" in quotes because it has been co- opted for only -one- form of activism. If we wanted a frame of reference that -allowed thought-, then the term wouldn't be restricted in this way.

Instead, if it was -activism- -per se- that was to be applauded (and perhaps one can make the case for doing just that), then it would be activism from -anywhere- in the ideological continuum, including activisms by libertarians, carnivores, and corporate behemoths.

If, on the other hand, only the activisms of certain parts of the political continuum are to be applauded, these would be labelled appropriately.

A very astute observation. My reply:

Daniel:

I'm aware of the issues you raised, thanks for your comments. I was putting the issue implicitly in a frame, understood by many of Disinformation's readers, that the press can function as a propaganda system (cf. the work of , Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Hermann and Ben Badikian). Of course, you might decide that Ellul, Chomsky, Badikian, and others are wrong, and that I've limited my worldview by relying on their conceptual model as a frame (in a way, I have).

If the "activist" sites had been regarded as "mainstream" or had supported "business/family values", no quotation marks would have been used. It's doubtful that the issue would have been raised or objected to at all. The issue is only raised,and raised subtly, when there are exceptions to the commonly accepted view.

The fact that the sites nominated are generally anti-globalist or non-profit sites, contra to the avowed economic rationalist paradigm of most tech press, meant that this "one" form (yes, at the expense of "other" forms), had to be singled out for a derisive comment. Why did only this "one" form, and only this one form of activism get nominated by the Webby Awards committee? Why was this form singled out?

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, as you wisely pointed out, and, if so, I pleade guilty to "confirmation bias", and for playing Devil's Advocate in this case. I hope I did so with some self-awareness.

If the voting is insular, reflecting a California/San Francisco nexus (a fair critique of the nominations as a whole), what does this suggest about the difference or "gap" in values between the SF nexus and America as a whole (or what Reuters percieves it to be?).

Corporate philanthropy is a very popular topic these days, but does the press ever put those activists and think tanks in quotation marks, to suggest that there are other alternatives and viewpoints? No, they generally don't (with a few exceptions). If they had conformed to your analysis, they would do this. Rather, this "omission of detail" is how thought control in a democratic society usually works. This omission works, firstly, by denying access to media (whilst promoting the "ideal" of an open press), and then marginalizing or misrepresenting your opposition.

Anti-globalist protesters (and nonprofits who are independent of "accepted" institutions and causes) do not have their viewpoint discussed, even when the same viewpoints are raised by people such as noted economist Edward Luttwak or investor George Soros (that "late capitalism", not capitalism per se, has created problems, that the Bretton-Woods institutions are ill-equipped to deal with new geopolitical realities, etc), or many others, from diverse positions on the political spectrum. Even though I don't agree with everything that certain anti-globalist protesters do, they have raised some interesting questions. This doesn't prevent me, or Disinfo readers, from reading the business press, and linking to specific articles of interest.

This is not an isolated case. In a column called "Hey Joe, It's the New World Order" (The Age, April 28, 2001, "Business & Money" p. 1), the highly respected Australian economist Stephen Bartholomeusz writes, in discussion of the decision last week by Australian treasurer Peter Costello to apply the Foreign Takeovers Act, to prevent Shell from acquiring Woodside, a national resources company: "There hasn't been much of a debate at any level of government or society about how we protect or advance our national interest in the face of global developments."

Let's ignore for a moment who may be "right" (I'd rather leave that open-ended), and look at the language:

"hasn't been much", "at any level", "in the face" are used as judgments in Bartholomeusz's article. The Reuters release reads: "Among the 27 awards to be handed out this year will be ones for "activism" that focus on anti-globalization street protesters, and animal rights and nonprofit sites while ignoring other shades of political and social opinion."

Note how "activism" immediately precedes "anti-globalist street protesters", and "animal rights and nonprofit sites" precedes "other shades". The language clusters, shows the implict bias and marginalizes the activists. The publications (business and major press, which are predominantly conservative in political outlook) that received this wire would not necessarily support these causes, nor would their readers. If it was something that they did support, the paragraph would be worded very differently; it is unlikely that the objection would have been raised.

Thanks for your feedback and for pointing out to me the limits of my own reality tunnel.

Sincerely,

Alex Burns

Friday, April 26, 2001

7:35 PM. A week is a long time in media. The Australian event of the week was the banning of Crikey.com.au editor Stephen Mayne, an award-winning (accredited) journalist, from a Victorian State Government press conference. This comes only days after Yahoo! barred reporters from its AGM. The e-mail exchange between Mayne and the press minder suggests that, after Matt Drudge revealed l'affaire Lewinsky to the world, Dotcom journalists are still being discriminated against.

7:50 PM. Brian Blitz wrote me that he is forming an organization in the American Midwest, called PROD (People for the Recognition of Opression through Disinformation). Drop him a note for further details. It's great to see more Disinfonauts taking grass-roots action!

My friend, Linda Wolf, has been nominated for her Daughters/Sisters site in the 2001 Computerworld Honors Program. She also finds time to run Youthactivism.org.

I've mentioned I'm doing a Politics and Media class at La Trobe University. Trevor Greenberg, a class member and activist, has put together a list of submitted links: many will be known to Disinfonauts, but there's some new ones that are worth checking out.

7:57 PM. Darren Morrison wrote me an e-mail which raised some valid editorial criticism. My reply follows, with some subsequent thoughts. Darren writes:

I have been an avid reader of Disinformation for some time now, and usually I am content to sit in the dark in the back row and watch as the movie and listen to the whispered comments of those in the rows in front. I am taking a little time out from my schedule to deliver a little greivance which has been growing like a tumour in my belly for a number of weeks now. So that you for taking time out of your busy schedule to read it.

When I first started reading disinfo, I was impressed at the scope of concepts that your zine encompassed, and indeed the quality of the writing, and writers. It was a little like finding an oasis in the desert of banner ads and junk mail. However in recent weeks I have noticed that disinformation seems to be mutating into one long editorial for your very good self, and less of a platform for the diverse selection of writers that have contributed over the last few years. It is not that I disagree with your views, in fact with much of what you say I am in agreement, its just that the diversity of opinion seems to be slackening, and you for better or worse seem to have taken it upon yourself to fill in the gaps. Is this intentional? I hope not, as that would seem to indicate that you are taking yourself more as "controller" than editor. I rarely read newspapers anymore, prefering to take my news from a cross section of online sources (as I find it is easier to filter out the bias), but even these online sources seem to have carried over the idea of the "editorial" from their newsprint counterparts.

This I think is a healthy additute and prevents a monopolizing of ideas, and it is one I hope you will take on board yourself. We all have reality tunnels, as Mr. Wilson says, and I find, that recently I have been seeing more and more of yours. This is not to say that I believe you should stop contributing, but only that I would like to encounter more world views in your magazine than I have been of late. Perhaps you sould limit yourself to a daily editorial, which would allow you to include what you think is really important. Or if you have an idea for an article, assign it to another of Disinfo's Contributors, you never know you might be surprised by the results, as the writer may approach the assignment from a much different angle than you would have done yourself.

Anyway, just a thought.

Keep up the good work

Regards

Darren Morrison
Dublin, Ireland.

My reply:

Thanks for your feedback. My answer is pretty simple: I don't seek to "control" content, and I value the diversity of writers and viewpoints that we've had. Nor do I seek to impose "Idea Monopolies". I seek to question my own "reality tunnels" and those of others. And I've had the pleasure of working with some very fine writers, and published many views that I do not personally share. I write the material because of my editorial contract, and other site production issues, which must remain confidential. Unlike other models, we are a commercial site, and we pay our writers for the content that they develop. We may not always be in a position to do so in the future.

The continuing fallout from the Dotcom Crash has affected many sites, particularly in editorial and content. Magazine publishing, for example, generates most of its money through advertising, and defrays production costs through subscriptions. Web sites do not appear to have the choice of either.

Sincerely,

Alex Burns

Some further thoughts: I have been surprised by pieces such as Sara Aronson's 23 Ways and Preston Peet's Columbus Wasn't First Across The Ocean. Both rose very quickly in our popularity rankings. I almost rejected both pieces, and I'm glad that both writers convinced me not to do so.

Many Disinfo regulars have other gigs: Russ Kick edits the news site alterNewswire and writes for the Village Voice; Peet writes for High Times magazine and New York Waste; Nick Mamatas edits material for Soft Skull Press, writes a column for the Greenwich Village Gazette, and has two articles in Artbyte magazine. We're all working on books and other projects.

Lastly, I don't see myself as an editor in the traditional hierarchical sense of magazines and newspapers. The Web requires a different viewpoint: you facilitate access for the writer, not censor it.

Thursday, April 19, 2001

11:32 AM. Ben Praccus, Kylie Purr, Marcus Westbury, and the rest of the Octapod gang, which recently celebrated its 5th anniversary, are about to launch a community-oriented club in Newcastle: The Red Star Club. They write:

The Red Star Club is a non-profit social space and community organisation that will be opening in Newcastle later in 2001. The club will operate a licensed bar (open to members and their guests) that will host music, art exibitions, film nights, and other events. Money raised by the club (it is a non-profit organisation) will spent on a community fund that will support and promote Newcastle based community, cultural, and environmental groups and events.

This is a project that deserves international help and feedback, so why not join the Yahoo! discussion group?

11:47 AM. Todd Fahey has launched a campaign to Dump McCain. Check out his "Top 10 Reasons" and browse the site, which is already creating a stir for Republican Nationals within Arizona politics. If Todd is "disappeared", or tailed by CIA agents, then you know why.

12:03 PM. I hear rumblings that there may be a Mediacircus event in 2001. The last one was in 1999: if you're a fan of Geert Lovink, the McSpotlight site or Andrew Garton, check out the MP3 and RealAudio archives. Lots of strategies and tactics that are still relevant.

David Helvarg has a great article about the environmental effects of an Exclusive Economic Zone: The Blue Frontier. Check it out.

Wednesday, April 18, 2001

11:22 PM. Spent the first part of the day organizing Australian reviews of You Are Being Lied To, with two definate confirmations. I've been so busy with Disinformation over the past year that I've not done much freelance work, but this brought back reminders of the importance of scheduling activities and managing conference times.

I saw a Publisher's Weekly review of John Shirley's new short novel, The View from Hell, out now from Subterranean Press. Both PW and I thoroughly recommend a good dose of Shirley to shake up your moral worldviews.

Al Giordano is also having a party in New York City this evening to raise money for his legal defense fund - visit Narco News for details and how to get an invitation.

Todd Fahey is also raising more hell in the netherworld that is Arizona politics, by launching a campaign to dump John McCain. And he promises some revelations about Free Republic.com. Stay tuned for more info . . .

11:39 PM. Media Channel has some great new pieces worth checking out (in fact, you should check out the huge site):

?Philip Seib on how high-tech and 24-hour media voyeurism is supplanting real (authentic?) journalism.

?Greg Guma on why the mainstream media will "black-out" the FTAA protests.

And don't forget to check out MediaChannel.org's excellent Media Reader.

Tuesday, April 17, 2001

10:49 PM. Morning email and phone chats with Preston Peet and Sara Aronson, ranging from the death of Joey Ramone to firsthand accounts of the maquiladoras near the Texas border towns.

Disinformation will be undergoing some changes over the next year. So, I started reading Daryl Conner's book Leading at the Edge of Chaos (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1998), which is concerned with how people and organizations react to transition changes. Here's an excerpt (p. 25):

Transition management literacy reflects the basic knowledge and skill level of a person, group, or entire organization regarding the ability to successfully design and carry out prescriptive plans for the execution of major change initiatives. Low literacy levels are usually associated with either little change-related experience or a weak grasp of the generic patterns that apply to how people respond to disruptions in their lives or of what can be done to facilitate the change journey from one state to another. High literacy levels typically reflect people who have weathered many transitions in their lives and, from this experience, have acquired a general understanding of the universal patterns and principles that can be relied on when planning and engaging change, regardless of the nature or setting of the effort. One of the critical challenges facing leaders today is the dangerously low transition management literacy rate that exists in most organizations.

Another way to look at this is that survival is more than IQ or the fashionable EQ (Emotional Quotient). The strategies you choose are shaped by your experiences, how you reacted to them ("fight-or-flight"), your Adversity Quotient (AQ) and your Values Quotient (VQ). Something that Robert Anton Wilson has been talking about for decades, using different metaphors.

Monday, April 16, 2001

5:11 PM. Morning reading: I finished David S. Pottruck and Terry Pearce's Clicks and Mortar: Passion Driven Growth in an Internet Driven World (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000). An interesting quote from Terry Pearce (p. 280) about the implications of the Internet:

I agree--it's revolutionary, well beyond what we can now imagine. I like to compare the Internet to the beginning of space travel in its impact on our consciousness; the shift it may engender is much more traumatic than that of the telephone or any other tool. In the same way that the picture of the Earth from space made us somewhat more experientially aware of our place in the universe, the Internet makes us aware of our interconnectedness. In looking at it this way, I have great hopes for the technology, that it will actually transform our relationships with one another, both individually and internationally.

10:26 PM. Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen of Conspire.com have returned with a vengeance: check out their Sinister Connections blogger/links list.

Kenn Thomas has posted some intriguing info on a possible Mossad/Slavak Connection at his Steamshovel Press site.

Friday, April 13, 2001

10:33 AM. Morning conference call between myself, Gary Baddeley (New York City) and Richard Metzger (Los Angeles). Several key future projects are in the works.

2:45 PM. The university is hosting an AA convention. Sometimes it's so tempting to leave some photocopies of Charles Bufe's chapter, "AA Lies", around campus.

8: 50 PM. I waltzed into Melbourne's Polyester Books to see several You Are Being Lied To copies promintently displayed on the front table, and owner Paul Elliott, sitting behind the counter, flicking through a copy. I had previously seen Elliott at the second National Young Writer's Festival (Brisbane, October 1999) speak about censorship. The book will be mentioned in a Beat Magazine (street press) ad this week. Copies had only arrived from the U.S. several days ago.

"I chatted by email with Russ Kick about Psychotropedia, and our store was one of the few to be mentioned in it. I first read his writing in Outposts, the predecessor," Elliott told me. "I really like the book's large format, its cover, and especially its design. You Are Being Lied To has a great collection of authors - Chomsky, Zinn, Jeff Cohen. I really liked Jim Hogshire's piece. You really need to have design, to get people's attention, even if you have 'the authors', or else people won't buy your book."

5 minutes after leaving Polyester, I found a copy of Snog's album Third Mall From The Sun, with the McDonald's cover, which was first banned from several chain-stores, and then censored under legal pressure. David Thrussell's research list is well worth checking out.

The most exciting news of the day was that Adam Sherburne, of legendary San Francisco agitprop band Consolidated, has agreed to an interview. I urge you to check out their latest album, The End of Meaning, and new MP3s, which include an excellent summary of the Napster and Gnutella debacle on the track The Fall of the Culture Industry. I file them under "seminal influence", and both activists and culture jammers can learn a lot from the band's techniques. Sherburne has included an essay, "A Note From The Underground," which is a must-read. Here's an excerpt:

I feel that social/political context is a telling as well as unavoidable filter through which all aesthetic choices and reflections are made. The historical means and images by which the culture industry informs and exerts control over both artist and listener (record deals, writing and acting contracts, radio/TV, advertising, fashion, pornography, male violence) is the clearest affirmation of the culture industry as propaganda arm of capital

I'm planning to spend Easter offline, in the, uh, real world. And I won't be attempting to incite a political riot with a Billy Idol song. Here's to the fall of the culture industry, which we are definately a part of . . .

Thursday, April 12, 2001

12:49 PM. Highlight of morning tram ride: watching an Aboriginal girl, maybe 16 or 17, shooting up heroin, complaining of getting a "bad batch" from her dealer, and then vomiting. The incident made my morning reading, David S. Pottruck and Terry Pearce's Clicks and Mortar: Passion Driven Growth in an Internet Driven World (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000), rather difficult. Further ominous reading: Damien Cave's article The Bankrupt Generation.

My find of the morning was a rare Crowded House CD, mainly compiled from a March 1992 concert in Newcastle (home of the Octapod crew), that was stolen from me in 1998. This CD was included on the Australian version, but is missing from the US release of Recurring Dream. The band launches into "There Goes God", segues into an improvised "Newcastle Jam", and plays a chilling version of "Hole In The River". Critics forget the brooding side of Crowded House: even at their most Beatlesque on Woodface, the band would embrace the unpredictable: they ended the album with a Paul Hester punk jam called "I'm Still Here", a track that just came, unexpectedly, out of nowhere. My favorite album is their second, Temple of Low Men, which is intense, stark and understated. And under-rated.

8:30 PM. Steve Gillard says that the Dot.com economy is nearly over. Here's a terribly boring comment on the philosophical concepts of causality and teleology. But hey, if you're serious about magick, you gotta know this stuff.

Causality explains meaning by a "way of knowing" that has a cause-effect structure: one thing causes another (causation). Teleology explains meaning by revealing that everything comes into existence for an end, goal or purpose (telos). Aristotle outlined causality in his Metaphysics treatise, but also believed that everything had a purpose (a teleological imperative). David Hume contended that causality was the result of perception, not an inter-relationship between two things. Teleology may argue for a final event, reason or singularity, and may support retroactive time (effect precedes and may even create 'cause'), whereas causality implies precedence and a classical sense of the time-space continuum.

Causal and teleological explanations have great implications for interpreting the possible meanings of life. Causality requires a necessary connection between action and subsequent effect, whereas teleology seeks to identify or uncover a final purpose. Causality underlies Empiricist, Darwinian, Existentialist, and Behaviorist explanations of meaning, whereas Teleology can be found in religious/spiritual schools and some interpretations of psychology and quantum mechanics, teleologists seek after the Final Cause and believe in an intrinsic meaning of life. Teleology is not required for a meaningful life or universe, but a non-dogmatic version can add vertical depth, combating the danger of an overly causal explanation made by 'greedy reductionists' (Daniel C. Dennett) that leaves you stranded in 'flatland' (Edwin Abbott).

Wednesday, April 11, 2001

10:50 AM. Morning reading: three more hours on Kerbel's Remote & Controlled, and an hour of meditation and yoga exercises. Here's Kerbel on what politics could be like (p. 66):

National political campaigns can be and have been about far more than just character posturing, empty promises, and manipulative efforts to win power. They are national periods of reevaluation during which the process of collective decisionmaking yields a resolution on the course of governance for the next several years. They are times for evaluating issues of popular concern, assessing the performance of the incumbent party, and evaluating the promises of challengers. They are opportunities for widespread political participation and the peaceful expression of civic desires and concerns, manifested through campaigning, petition signing, letter writing, voting, and any of the numerous activities associated with elections in a democracy.

No mention of chads there.

Now, here's a really critical section for Disinfonauts. Kerbel's comments could apply to our political coverage as well (p. 99):

When reality frequently fails to meet reporter expectations, coverage acquires the language of disappointment and defeat. This slant makes it hard to ferret through reports of setback and failure without asking reasonable questions about exactly what is going on in Washington. Even if the citizen's intent is to be informed about the details of a policy being debated and discussed, the way governance is framed in the press ensures this information will be conveyed along with doubtful messages about the state of the system. It is possible, even rational, for the citizen to be educated--and put off.

11:54 AM. Lord British (creator of the legendary Ultima series) has just done an interview about his release from Electronic Arts.

12:01 PM. Michael Albert of ZNet has written a very important article called The Trajectory of Change about the growth of/challenges faced by alternative culture and activism. Check it out.

Tuesday, April 10, 2001

9:43 AM. Morning reading: Matthew Kerbel's Remote & Controlled: Media Politics in a Cynical Age (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995). Kerbel offers some insights that apply to why many of the Disinfo Forum posters are so cynical: since FDR co-opted the media with his "fire-side chats", there has been a split between the public, the media managers, the politicians they manage, and the journalists who cover the politicians for the "public interest" (and increasingly for unelected "corporate interests"). The news managers are "shape-shifters": David Gergen began as Reagan's image consultant, and now conducts PBS dialogues with the likes of Howard Gardner, a Harvard University professor of education and pioneer in the development of multiple intelligences.

11:15 AM. David Brooks of BoBos fame has just published an article on "The Organization Kid": how the generation born after 1982 are shaping up (decide for yourself if they are the product of "social engineering" or not).

12:11 PM. Robert Fripp's Discipline Global Mobile Diary features some tantalizing excerpts from Margaret Wheatley's book Leadership and the New Science (Berrett-Koehler Publications, 2001), a reissue of an influential management text that draws upon chaos, complexity and quantum theory. Fripp writes:

A reaction is mechanical, a response is intentional, carries presence and direction. So, disturbance would threaten a mechanically-operating system; that is, a basement operation. If the system is alive, present, and on its feet, sensing the light & warmth of the sun, a response is possible. This alive & open system, were it to have an effective discipline, would not rely only on disturbances presented by the world - these might stop for a while.

We need the space to navigate these quantum possibilities, which have a "logic" that cannot be found in fourth quarter earnings statements. These "prods" can come from "external" market conditions, or they can come from "internal" psychological conditions.

At the Millennium Youth Forum, I got a "flash" of a different editorial direction for Disinfo. Today, more confirmation that this "alternate" choice may be the "right" one in the longterm.

5:32 PM. The Gurdjieff International Review has just republished an excellent interview with philosopher Jacob Needleman, originally published in Gnosis magazine. One of the most "illuminating" pieces you will read about real Work.

9:37 PM. More great articles from the ZNet team: a Labor Notes interview with Naomi Klein, and John Pilger lashes out on the connection between Margaret Thatcher and Pol Pot.

Monday, April 9, 2001

11:33 AM. Preston Peet tells me that the US has used Melbourne, my city, to spy on China. Bastards. I was hoping 'they' would use Sydney at least.

3:32 PM. Craig Stevens writes regarding my Spiral Dynamics?Expanded Bibliography:

Hi Alex,

I just looked over the web page on spiraldynamics. It's interesting, I have to admit that some of it went over my head because it's not an area that I read in.

It takes some time for everything to fall into place. Thanks for checking it out.

There were a couple questions/thoughts that I had when I looked at the 7 variations of change.
1. The first thing I wondered was if the colours were aura colours?

No. They're mnemonic tools to help memorize each of the stages of psychological development. They are often misinterpreted as aura colours. The colors were devised by Chris Cowan in the mid-1970s.

2. The second thing that I thought about that was more of a major concern is the idea of everything working together. This sounds like the ultimate opportunity for oppression and missuse of power.

We're very aware of that, which is why there's a certification process for practitioners.

I don't know if I like the idea of having everything joined together like that....

It depends what you mean by "having everything joined together": they can be "top-down", "bottom-up", "oblique", "holonic" etc.

This is why you have to look beyond the surface language and metaphors to the deep perceptual and thinking systems. Two people may use the same words, but understand them in very different ways.

Have you ever heard of the "New World Order"? Or how about all the globalization protests in seatle...

The globalization protests are in response to an unhealthy form of Blue-Orange. The protesters themselves have different mixtures of thinking systems, which in turn, are creating a totally different protest movement from prior ones.

NWO fears usually have strong Blue-Orange, as does most of the conspiracy-oriented writing. The lower colors do not perceive everything that the later ones do: this does not necesarily mean that the later ones are better, simply that they see more. The transnational institutions can be healthy ("for-better") or unhealthy ("for-worse"). In turn, they are related to major Problems of Existence that require planetary solutions and that individual nations cannot resolve by themselves.

This is often misperceived by Blue-Orange as a "top-down" structure that would destroy national sovereignty and individuality, and, where it is Blue-Orange institutions simply speaking the language of subsequent levels, there is that danger.

An institution anchored in Yellow-Turquoise would be concerned with the system as a whole, and with the healthy expression of all previous systems. If you see the world as an integrated and interconnected system, an action in one area will have different - and unpredictable - effects on the systems as a whole.

I think that although conflict makes some things inefficient in the world, it is a necissary element.

It depends what kind of conflict you mean. Conflict at Purple is tribal, at Blue-Orange between nation-states and corporations, Blue-Orange versus Green underlies the "culture wars" of the 1990s, at Yellow it would be a catastrophe like Chernonyl or Bhopal. The need for "conflict-for-conflict's sake" hopefully diminishes: competition is replaced by "co-opetition", and so on.

I mean., to put it bluntly, Humpty Dumpty can fall on his fat ass before I'd see the world worship him. All hail Humpty Dumpty and his great efficient world? I damn well think not!!!

Spiral Dynamics would ask: "what kind of great efficient world, for whom, and what do you mean by efficient, anyway?"

Everyone has prejudices, filters, and presuppositions. SD enables you to question these, and not rush to hasty generalizations or conclusions.

Just my thoughts, but that's what I got out of what I read....
-Craig

Thanks for your feedback.

9:44 PM. Godshift are digital punkz from Mexico. Sounds intriguing: check 'em out. They write:

We have created a cybernetic experiment: "Songs Of Sex And Destruction" to destroy the human mind with sonic and graphic deformations. Please, download and share the tracks to disperse the chaos.

9:53 PM. Dani Rodik has an interesting article, Trading in Illusions, about the myths of globalization, in the reputable geopolitical magazine Foreign Policy.

Saturday, April 7, 2001

1:56 PM. Two queries about our involvement in the new Electronic Arts game Majestic from concerned Disinfonauts. Here are my replies:

Lori Goltl writes:

I was told you are a proud participant in the new game called Majestic. Is that true? If it is, I have lost total respect for you and your website. I will also be unsubscribing from your newsletter. I am sure, also, that I probably won't be hearing from you on this.

Lori
captbob@gpcom.net

Dear Lori,

Our "participation" is simply that Electronic Arts would like to link to some of our site's content and ongoing research. It's not something we're making money from, nor has EA asked us to alter our editorial voice or impose censorship in any way.

We get criticisms from people about the commercial aspects of our site all the time: when we launch a site redesign, when we became an Amazon affiliate because of finances etc etc. We've always been very upfront about this, and also reminded people that the site makes money, such as through our YABLT book and Disinfo Nation series, in order to survive.

Other mediums rely on advertising, Web sites cannot. And strategic alliances, if they are done with awareness, do not necessarily compromise content.

Your decision not to visit our site, and to unsubscribe from our newsletter, is regrettable, but understandable.

Sincerely,

Alex Burns

Dear Mr. S. Miles Lewis,

As a courtesy, Mr. Dave Walsh forwarded to me your message to the blather-talk list and the link to your article Majestic Art of Electronic Disinformation.

I would appreciate it if Mr. Walsh would forward my message to blather-talk on my behalf. You write:

With "reality" television shows like Mtv's Fear and the Fox Family Channel's World's Most Haunted Places already pushing the envelope of ethical entertainment, the inherant dangers of such a paranoic "game" are quite apparent.

The dangers of a "virtual" or "immersive" media environment that exalts "subjective idealism" were predicted by the postmodern philosopher Jean Baudrillard. Similar "ethical dangers" were levelled at Dungeons & Dragons and heavy metal rock music in the 1980s. And at television in the 1950s, and at cinema during the Pre-Code period (1930-34), which led to the "Hayes Code" and the "Breen Office". Any "new" innovation is usually regarded with "fear and loathing" until people adjust to it, and then it is lauded as an "innovation" by those who once despised it.

The real danger is that many people who are fascinated by conspiracy theories lack any training in how to distinguish between information and disinformation. Unlike academic circles, there is no "peer-review process" for conspiracy research, beyond informal networks and friendships. And a lot of the conclusions derived from this research will fail the basic standards of journalism, sceptical thinking, and propositional logic.

If Majestic accelerates this lifecycle, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Careful and thorough research should stand up to public scrutiny; material that "propagandizes" for a particular viewpoint without critical analysis of others will be exposed for what it truly is.

Among the many ethical ambiguities implied by the very premise of the game is its use of real and fake web sites to promote real and hoax news stories. The game designers have gone so far as to create front companies for several of these web sites. They are actively urging fans of the game to create web sites to act as fronts for the game.

Many fans would do this anyway if Majestic became a phenomena: the company is using viral marketing techniques. See Seth Godin's book IdeaVirus and the work of Douglas Rushkoff for details. See also my Advertising Virus article.

Meanwhile, high quality parapolitical sites such as www.disinfo.com have officially announced their open participation in this new gaming experience.

Our "participation" is limited to EA linking to some of our site's content and ongoing research. We do not derive any income from this, nor have EA imposed any censorship or asked us to alter our editorial voice.

Of course, many will see this game as a part of the conspiracy itself; ie- the Majestic game is simply a pretext for the very type of data gathering / backdoor access to your privacy engendered in the original claims of Octopus conspiracy researchers and NSA Echelon devotees.

Similar fears were levelled at Chris Carter's X-Files series when it first launched. Because EA is a commercial entity, there would also be consumer legislation protecting the sharing of personal information. Several "Octopus conspiracy researchers and NSA Echelon devotees" have, ironically, expressed interest in also being involved in Majestic, to disseminate their research to a wider audience.

For more links to online resources and articles about Majestic please check here.

Sincerely,

Alex Burns

Friday, April 6, 2001

7:38 PM. A Disinfo writer asked me today what my average day is like. This is an insight into the thrilling life of juggling being Disinformation's current editor and the final year of my long-overdue BA degree:

I got up at 7AM, had a shower, breakfast, saw a magpie limping across the road. Quickly checked my email, responded to some urgent messages, and scanned the headlines for several papers and magazines. At 10AM I had a two-hour politics and media class/tutorial on media and advertising, which included watching the opening of the brilliant film Bullworth, discussing the merits of the Frankfurt School's critique of advertising (a group of German intellectuals that included Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm and Theodor Adorno). This also included an article than mentioned several cases of media censorship by John Malone, whose entrenched conservatisim sparked the Great Internet Swindle. I then had a one hour meeting on a radio campaign project dealing with youth suicide, but two people didn't turn up (Sonia did, so we drank coffee and worked out the basic script and demographics). At 2AM I took a one-hour tram ride to Melbourne's CBD to get a new glasses lens put in, and read the opening of Ben Badikian's The Media Monopoly (the 1997 edition) on the way. Answered some more email whilst I waited for the lens, then I picked the glasses up, and returned to the university. To spend the next six to seven hours working on the Disinfo site. After that, I'll need another hour or two on university reading, as I'm a week behind because of MYF. Then sleep. Exciting, huh?

8:02 PM. The sceptics at Suck ran a story last week on some cost-cutting plans by publications. There's some very funny ideas here (like putting mail on the frontpage . . . like this column), but they overlooked one idea: create a Slashdot.org-like forum, create "strategic alliances" with other brilliant sites (like Wired, Netslaves and The New Republic) and get your visitors to both suggest stories and write forum content. Hmmmm . . .

I write this tongue-in-cheek, since I visit Plastic every day. I'd even get time to post story ideas if I wasn't so busy with another site.

8:12 PM. One site I do thoroughly recommend you visit is ZNet, which is one of the best online communities, whether you count yourself as a political progressive or not (if not, why not?). My picks for today are a piece by Naomi Klein on police brutality and an older piece by Aziz Choudry on New Zealand. ZNET hosts Z Magazine and has excellent sections on crises and geopolitical commentaries.

Do yourself a favor and check ZNET out today. [SFX: Tie A Yellow Ribbon To The Old Oak Tree. VO: "This advertorial has been bought to you by the Bush administration and their pals, the Chinese government."]

8:21 PM. People tell me that Australian media is immune to propaganda. Have a look at the Herald Sun headline for April 5, 2001, featuring the single word "Captives" and clearly doctored photos of the US spy plane crew, and decide for yourself ("How could those evil Chinese take our good wholesome American men and women? They had to smash up top-secret equipment with axes!").

If Richard Metzger is the Oprah of the Underground, does that make me cyberspace's answer to Lord Haw Haw, for writing the above paragraph.

8:27 PM. Yesterday the University of Melbourne students went on another action campaign, armed with axes (perhaps they thought they were US Army cryptologists caught in a Sino-American low intensity conflict scenario?). Violence breeds more violence, and is the quickest way to discredit a so-called revolution.

Thursday, April 5, 2001

6:48 PM. Here's a brief posting to a Politics and Media discussion group:

Analysts who cite Murdoch and Fairfax are often using a C. Wright Millsian media elite approach. There's a lot of validity in that, however, when combined with political activism it may quickly turn into a "blame-the-media-owner" campaign. Which again is valid up to a point, but misses a lot of the complexity of the current media environment and how organizations actually work. Often censorship occurs because journalists internalize values unconsciously.

Journalism sociologist Bruce McNair described the new media environment as a chaotic flow model: "there are always other, opposing tendencies, other accounts and other interruptions existing in the meme-pool." (Brian McNair. The Sociology of Journalism. New York: Arnold/Oxford University Press, 1998: 33.) The key words here are "chaotic", "flow" and "meme" (Richard Dawkin's term for a cultural unit of information that spreads by viral means). This is also what films like Wag the Dog, The Truman Show and Pleasantville portray.

The media elite approach contends a "top-down" model. Henry Gans suggested a "bottom-up" model in the 1960s called "multiperspectitalism", which sites like Slashdot.org and Plastic.com have begun to implement. What McNair suggests is that media flows can be manipulated, hijacked or culture-jammed. His insight echoes research from Douglas Rushkoff to Aaron Lynch (and novels by Neal Stephenson) which suggest a more dynamic media environment, even when there is oligopolistic media ownership.

From Mediachannel.org and Alternet.org to D2KLA.org and the international Indymedia.org network, there's a lot of activist media on the rise. My concern is that in being opposition to media cartels, these organizations may eschew journalism/editorial standards, and have become the unwitting conduits of what Jacques Ellul called "sociological propaganda".

9:43 PM. I'm taking a university semester unit in philosophy, values and the meaning(s) of life. Our text is E.D. Klemke's The Meaning of Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). This week we studied a Christian scholar, Craig, who argued that if God existed, then "objective values" could only derive from him/her. Note the "if-then-only" logic pattern, which forces you into a cul de sac (apart from deciding if God exists, which is harder than listening to Hootie and the Blow(razor)fish). Anyway, as part of this, everyone is keeping a weekly journal. It's something that many people, from Aleister Crowley to Ken Wilber advise you to do. Here's my entry on Craig:

Craig invokes Paul Tillich's "threat of non-being" and problems with the Big Bang cosmology (Klemke, 40) to argue for a God-derived meaningful life. Without this religious concept, "mankind is a doomed race in a dying universe" (Klemke, 42). He cites the philosophies of biologist Jacques Monod, and existentialist authors Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus as futile and meaningless. He mentions Dostoevsky ("If there is no immortality then all things are permitted"), Ayn Rand ("Live totally for self; no one holds you accountable"). Craig then summarises these arguments as "since one's destiny is unrelated to one's behavior, you may as well just live as you please" (Klemke, 43). But this is a distortion of these philosophies, created by Craig as a 'straw-man': evolutionary psychology offers substantial evidence that destiny and behavior are inter-related (but that behavior does not always determine destiny in the Calvinist sense); Sartre argued that existence preceded essence; and the Dostoevsky quote closely resembles Francois Rabelais's libertarian philosophy ("Nothing is real, therefore everything is permitted", which can be traced to the Muslim mystic and political philosopher Hassan-i-Sabbah, who argued that our reality epistemology determines our subjective values and ethical worldview).

This 'deletion' of the complexity of other arguments and worldviews is also evident in Craig's literalist critique of Nietzsche, in which he argues that this created a 'slippery-slope' to nihilism and that it led to the destruction of meaning and value in life (Klemke, 46). Nietzsche, however, argued that that Christianity's emphasis on an omniscient God and Life-After-Death focus was inherently life-denying. Nietzsche also argued for an asperspectival view of truth, a trans-valuation of all values, and the psyche's ability to generate new horizons and respond to different existential crises.

Because of this distortion and reliance on 'straw-man' arguments, I find Craig's reasons to be unsatisfying.

Feel free to critique and discuss. Damn it, my life matters to me, even if it doesn't to anyone else!

Wednesday, April 4, 2001

10:37 AM. To continue the Oz rock theme from yesterday, I just noticed that the troubled music site SonicNet.com (Pud of Fucked Company wrote: "rumor has it on Tuesday MTVi will layoff the entire staff of SonicNet.com, leaving the general manager as its sole employee") has a frontpage profile of the Australian band Killing Heidi. Several months ago I heard Killing Heidi's vocalist Ella Cooper tell a story: her high-school teachers felt that she was never going to account for anything, especially with such a rebellious hair-style. Killing Heidi are, in my opinion, industry-hyped, after reading Craig Mathieson's latest book The Sell-in (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2000), about how the corporate rock machine bought out Australian alternative rock in the mid-to-late 1990s. It's not available in the States yet, but check out HiFi Days: The Future of Australian Rock (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1997), his previous book. Well worth reading, whatever "business" you're in.

10:46 AM. I wrote the following in our Newsletter yesterday about our April Fool's prank:

There were in-jokes in the article: "Innsmouth Investments" refers to H.P. Lovecraft's story "Shadow Over Innsmouth" (suitable for a company that is part of the Razorfish Subnetwork, right?), Basil Zaharoff was an early 20th century arms dealer who influenced Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey, and the picture of Alex Burns is actually of the blues guitarist (we share the same name and live in the same city). Several things in the article are real: we will be part of the content for the Electronic Arts game Majestic, and I am working on an "holonomic editing methodology" with materials from the National Values Center Inc and Integral Institute, but there won't be any info on that for several years, whilst we collate information and crystallize our thoughts.

I don't want to appear self-congratulatory about the prank, just thought I would let you all in on some in-jokes. Read the opening from The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

11:17 AM. Russ Kick has just updated his excellent alterNewswire site. Check it out!

9:48 PM Here's an infodump from the book I've been threatening to release for the past few years:

For those of you who have trouble with the word "meme", it must also include "psychosocial" elements, since it is a unit of *cultural information*. A "biopsychosocial complex adaptive information system". The spiritually-inclined can read Philip K. Dick's VALIS trilogy and George Gurdjieff's "legominism" in Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. Ponder what Saint Dawkins missed and what Saint Wilber is yet to explicate :)

Gurdjieff defined the legominism as "ancient wisdom is [culturally] transmitted beneath a form ostensibly intended for quite a different purpose" (John Godolphin Bennett. Gurdjieff: Making A 'New World.' New York: Harper & Row, 1973: 22). These deeply embedded spiritual truths encompassed architecture, archaeological artefacts, dance, and mythic folklore (George Gurdjieff. Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950: 16). Aware of inter-generation warfare, surface aesthetics, and external condition fluxes that affected deep cultural patterns, Gurdjieff believed that this knowledge was "not preserved in books but in the experiences of people."(John Godolphin Bennett. ibid: 66). Gurdjieff arrived at this formulation through study in Bektashi and Naqshbandiyya Sufi circles, and also through studying Russian neurophysiologist Vladimir Bekhterev's research into the brain and conditioned reflexes at Kars Military Academy (James Webb. The Harmonious Circle: The Lives of G.I. Gurdjieff, P.D. Ouspensky, and Their Followers. London: Thames & Hudson, 1980: 82).

Dawkin's "meme" idea was also anticipated by William S. Burroughs' "Algebra of Need". In a 1968 interview with Daniel Odier, Burroughs proposed the theory "that in the electronic revolution a virus is a very small unit of word and image. I have suggested how such units can be biologically activated to act as communicable virus strains." (William S. Burroughs with Daniel Odier. The Job: Topical Writings and Interviews. London: Calder, 1984: 14). Burroughs acknowledged the importance of "the virus-eye view" (William S. Burroughs with Daniel Odier. ibid: 12). He called upon activists to "mix your own linguistic virus." (William S. Burroughs with Daniel Odier. ibid: 106). His early experiments with scrambling patterns, lifecycles, and laboratory-made viruses also embraced early neurology research (William S. Burroughs with Daniel Odier. ibid: 187-190).

Tuesday, April 3, 2001

10:13 AM. Our April Fool's Day prank was dreamed up by tech genius Lee Hoffman, and executed by our editorial team. I posted the following message to our discussion forum:

"For those of you who are still confused by this article, the truth is in the links. Read the article, click on all the links, and you'll work it out. The variety of reactions on this comments board is also intriguing."

From our About page:

"We'd also like to remind you that the name of this site is Disinformation. We encourage you to research each topic for yourself: check out all the links, especially the ones that seem contrary to your views; question the motivation of the writer and publisher; and form your own opinion about the information that is being presented. We suggest that you treat all other news/information outlets in the same way - the media have strong biases which directly affect the way in which news and information is presented to you - and very often that leads to disinformation."

1:53 PM. Here's a story I heard about the diabolical New Zealand actor Sam Neill and the perils of celebrity:

My friend was visiting the Auckland zoo one afternoon, when she sees Sam Neill and his wife. She approaches Neill for an autograph, then overhears him grumbling to his wife about how he always gets approached by fans and has no privacy, so she walks away.

Several hours later, my friend goes to get some lunch at the zoo cafe. Standing in line, she turns around to see that Neill and his wife are right behind her. And Neill's wife turns to him and exclaims, "SEE! You CAN go out into the public and NOT be harassed by autograph hunters!"

So, my friend never got Sam Neill's autograph. But she did learn a thing or two about the perils of celebrity.

1:57 PM. Preston Peet recommends you check out the fundamentalist Christian/Star Wars parody site Tool of Satan. Another funny April Fool's joke, heh heh.

4:25 PM. Many of you know that I attended the Millennial Youth Forum last week, at the invitation of Sean Healy and Kath Williamson. I've also been working with Spiral Dynamics methodologies for scanning "deep values" (the presuppositions and values-attracting meta-memes that shape individuals, groups and worldviews) as opposed to "hidden values" (the specific ideologies and -isms) and "surface values" (icons and symbols), which was developed from the research of Clare W. Graves. We are talking about thinking systems found in people, not "types" of people. These are not racial or genetic codes, but rather, memetic or cultural DNA. Two articles that outline the color coding are The Age of National Schizophrenia by Dr. Don Beck and my own Advertising Virus. National Values Center Consulting also has several MP3s of Graves that are worth listening to, if somewhat academic. Here's an excerpt from an email I sent today about what I perceived at the forum:

Many of the kids came from rural communities - BLUE/orange faced with competition from ORANGE/green and BEIGE problems. Many were strongly GREEN/red: the GREEN wasn't recognized, so their outlet was RED indulgence in heroin and speed (little respect or space to be heard, so RED was ARRESTED in some cases, except if they were playing Dr. Dre and Eminem at 6 AM in the morning!). ORANGE skills needed to support their creative endeavours. Perception of BLUE social roles was limited to "I get pregnant, have a shotgun marriage, and lead a boring life." There were several hippie parents there, including one GREEN/yellow couple who ran a solar-power business and DJ classes. He carried their baby around, so a few of the kids saw that a relationship can be mutually supportive, and the guys can play their part.

The festival organizers "anchored" BEIGE and PURPLE awareness of space with an Aboriginal tribal greeting, a fire ritual (where each of us wrote an internal fetter on a piece of paper and then ceremonially burnt it), and then mirrored that with a tree-planting during which we contemplated an idea that we each wanted to "implant" into the collective unconsciousness. The forum management was very GREEN (with a bit of BLUE announcements at meal-times), and even joked about "consensus decision-making" that took several days while everyone's opinions were heard.

Many of the sessions turned into a space for the kids to tell their stories and offer their opinions. Example: During the "Censorshit" session, one of the discussion leaders mentioned how a performance art video that showed body-piercing had suddenly been taken off the night before. "How do you feel about this incident of censorship?" The reply was: "Well, things are much more open and free here than they are at school camps!"

The youth suicide sessions were intense and confronting. The first "official" one outlined a national campaign to raise awareness, focusing on the early signs. In the next two sessions, people told their stories and how they learned from the experience. There was also discussion of a pro-active campaign. My friend Kylie Purr is now working on a site for the project, which was discussed in the final session. I caught bits and pieces of each: it was hard to be in the "hot zone" for more than a few minutes at the time, but worth it for what the session participants bravely achieved.

I caught the end of the drug discussion session. Plenty of creative dissonance being thrown around, including the usual BLUE "crackdown-by-public-shaming" and ORANGE "let's-protect-our-image; this-doesn't-happen-here-much" flak PR by school management. Scare tactics, not the BEIGE info that the students wanted: "Give us the information on what the drugs will do, and then let us make an informed decision. The drugs are out there, we have to face pressure groups, so scare tactics and public denials won't be effective," said several students.

Could a change in education policy and a classroom discussion of Traffic help end the War on Some Drugs and the problem of substance abuse amongst youth?

9: 47 PM. Apart from a slight error (Shihad originally hailed from New Zealand, but moved to Melbourne recently), Emma Pearce's Village Voice article on Aussie rock, well . . . seriously rocks. You should definately check out the music by Brisbane's Powderfinger and Melbourne's The Living End. And the line about "the sun, surf, mullet haircuts, brown brick houses, and placid green lawns that supposedly characterize the suburbs" is definately a stereotype. At least Pearce didn't mention Pseudo Echo, which Ms. Purr played on the drive from Woodford to Brisbane. Memories . . .

Sunday, April 1, 2001

2:47 PM. Back from the Millennial Youth Forum. Here's an excerpt from an email to Howard Bloom:

hmmmm, so the Mohawk Indians of Northern New York State are protesting against globalism, eh? go to the protest and note what sort of shoes, pants, shirts, and coats the mohawks are wearing.

I don't know about the Mohawk Indians, but Howard, you totally miss the point here. Go and read Naomi Klein's seminal (and I don't use that world lightly) book No Logo (New York: Flamingo, 2000) for starters. The "commodity activism" criticism is often made by the press: yes, it has a point, but misses why the anti-globalist movement has grown so strong. I also suggest you look at Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul's books, especially The Unconscious Civilization (New York: Free Press, 1997) and Christopher Lasch's The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (New York: W.W. Norton and Co, 1994). Anthony Giddens also has some very interesting thoughts on the problems of High Modernity and the North/South and Digital divides.

The anti-globalist movement coincided with the cold war's demise, a growing focus on trans-national entities, the "New Military Humanism" of the Persian Gulf War and Kosovo, Gen-X and McJobs (Douglas Coupland). Edward Luttwak, in a seminal 1991 National Review article, also predicted the shift from geopolitics to geoeconomics. If you watch early Gen-X films, such as Clerks for example, many of them are set in shopping malls, convenience stores and temp agencies. Because of these historical conditions, the anti-globalist movement may resemble prior activist movements on the surface, but will be different in character, as its lifecycle proceeds [I'm already seeing differences between Gen-X and Millennials activists].

The movement is a spectrum of different people and different agendas. Some activists suffer from the "Pre/Trans Fallacy" identified by Ken Wilber (postconventional outlook but preconentional and narcissistic inner development). Others are very aware of the need for inner development and for new models. 'They' reject the "selling newspapers for the revolution" model. 'They' will utilize societal structures for mutual benefit. 'They' are aware of the need for grounding in a meta-philosophy or spiritual outlook that "integralizes" inner development and outward action.

You write: The folks protesting against global commerce and multinational corporations owe most of lifestyle they know and love to the very system they oppose.

Well, I disagree: the most powerful lifestyle changes I've witnessed have been the result of groups coalescing, like Australia's National Young Writer's Festival and Electrofringe, which on a miniscule budget, injects A$1.3 million in a single week into Newcastle's economy. This is the Bloom Pentad at work. Or DIY zines (small photocopied magazines and collages) and electronica CDs that are made at home using 10-year-old Commodore Amiga computers that were purchased from secondhand shops. [I see a lot of other people "buy" into the logo and latte myth.]

I don't "owe" anything to a company like Nike, that uses sports superstars to promote its product, yet lies about Exclusive Economic Zones and the working conditions of its maquiladoras. Same with the Dotgone Economy: visited sites like FuckedCompany.com, Netslaves.com or DotComScoop.com lately?

What do I "owe" to a corporate ecosystem, that as an "emergent property", devours its own and then uses corporate PR to cover it up?

Erich Fromm predicted the rise of the "Marketing Personality", and saw his visions fulfilled in the work of Tony Robbins and Tom Peters (which I enjoyed, but it's not as rebellious as these authors would claim). President Dwight Eisenhower warned of a "Military-Industrial Complex", which morphed, according to Australian theorist McKenzie Wark, into a "Military-Entertainment Complex". The same theme - the rise of an American Corporatism - is evident in Pre-Code era films during the transition from Herbert Hoover to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Why do we remember a film like Mr. Smith Goes To Washington but not Gabriel Over The White House?

As Douglas Rushkoff predicted, we're in the midst of an "information arms race". Don't be surprised if some of us use guerilla tactics, agitprop and psychological warfare methods. That's why activists like Adbusters.org, RTMark.com, Youthactivism.org and Alternet.org are so effective in fueling their reader's cognitive dissonance. It's then up to the reader to do something about that dissonance.

Thursday, March 22, 2001

8:11 PM. Some answers to a Polmedia discussion list:

1. How can people be enabled to question?

Place them in a situation where they experience "cognitive dissonance" (Leon Festinger) of their filters and worldview. John Fowles' novel The Magus is worth examining. Rather than try to indoctrinate people with a particular philosophy or worldview, give them "tools of thinking": hermeneutics and general systems theory are useful, as is depth psychology. The study of signs (semiotics) and argument/logic is also useful. You need to cultivate the ability to question, which is more difficult to sustain than just a knee-jerk reaction against a particular body [insert name of much-hated multinational corporation here].

If anarchism is partly about destabilizing existing power structures, questioning how meaning is constructed and texts (documents, books, films, music) are interpreted can be a self-liberating act.

2. Is it generally desirable that more than a small number do in fact ask such questions, or would any society find large-scale questioning of its structures too destabilising?

That depends on the historical period, the existential problems being questioned, and the social status ("pecking order") of the people doing the questioning. When such questioning reaches "critical mass" (around 30% of the population) it becomes "normal". Until that time, it is attacked or marginalized by those groups in power.

Howard Bloom and Robert Wright have painted a picture of society as a "social/ group organism" (echoing Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan). Bloom has a "pentad" model that I'll post to this list at a later date.

If you dare to question societal truths, you're taking a risk. You may be accepted, like Ben Franklin's rebellion against England. You may be persecuted, as Socrates was. Or, you may be consigned, as Greil Marcus says, to the "dustbin of history". Part of that is how you conduct yourself, and how far you are "estranged" from society. The dynamics can be influenced by you, but are also beyond your total control.

Wednesday, March 21, 2001

7:44 PM. Some excerpts from an email to a friend about the perils encountered by spiritual communities:

I've seen many good organizations compromised by infighting and bickering. The TA script is called "War of the Magicians": it split the Fourth Way (George Gurdjieff and Pyotr Ouspensky), the counterculture (Mondo 2000 v Wired; Mark Dery v Douglas Rushkoff), the Enneagram (Helen Palmer's decision to publish material and create a fake "oral tradition"), and the 1975 split between Anton LaVey (Church of Satan) and Dr. Michael A. Aquino (who subsequently founded the Temple of Set).

In all cases, the people were intelligent, had what they thought were the best intentions (viz-a-viz their personal values system), and the effects were hidden by a short-term surge in books, seminars and public notoriety. But, in the long-term, the "communities-of-practice" splintered into competing secular denominations, further from from the Source. There's a Sufi fable about this process, called "the soup of the soup of the soup".

Idries Shah, a noted Sufi teacher, told a story about what happened to the Fourth Way community after the death of George Gurdjieff in 1949. "The spark of the teaching died with him," Shah said, "and those who seek after the truth that he embodied will only find ashes."

9:11 PM. Here's a great quote by media/propaganda analyst Edward S. Hermann, from his essay "Media in the U.S. Political Economy":

The political economy of the U.S. mass media is dominated by communication gatekeepers who are not media professionals so much as large profit-making organizations with close ties to government and business. This network of the powerful provides news and entertainment filtered to meet elite demands and to avoid offending materials. The filtering process is imperfect, however. Although they agree on basic premises, the elite frequently disagree on tactics, and beyond this, normal news-making processes do not screen out all inconvenient facts and stories. It is extremely rare, however, for such dissonant items to graduate to act as a framework that questions generally accepted principles, or to be part of "big news." This presentation of dissident themes only episodically, within official frameworks, and implemented by free-market forces without state censorship, enhances the credibility of the dominant ideology and perspective.