This morning

A.

Yet another day of bombing all over the place. In the mountain here, we were subject to about three different bombing runs: 1 to continue destroying the Beirut to Damascus road; another to destroy the cell phone antennas; and another to again hit the Beirut to Damascus road. Just a few minutes ago, the house was shaking again, and I only assume the Israelis are pounding the same area. The safe areas are much further to the north, the northeastern enclave, an area traditionally christian. Listening to Nasrallah's speech tonight was not reassuring one bit. After pleading with the Lebanese to stand firm, and after denouncing Arab government leaving Lebanon to pay the price for Israeli aggression, he asked us all to look at sea and watch the Israeli gunboat that had been pounding the coast and hills all day. he said that it was about to be hit by a HizbAllah missile. He promised that it will burn, that it will sink, that its sailors will die. It made me sickto my stomach, almost as much as it makes me sick to hear Olmert, Bush, the Saudi, and Palestinian position about this. Nasrallah also called for an open war against Israel, and that he will hit Haifa, and what is behind Haifa, and behind and behind Haifa. What this means remains unlcear. But clearly it is worrying. Within minutes of the speech, parts of West Beirut were celebrating. The city is about to be reduced to rubble, and fireworks are being fired in the air. Incredible. Al-Jazeera and most local networks pointed their lenses towards to sea, to look for a missile launch, which came but was not visible. This is just not good. This is just about to get worse. I dont know what to think anymore. Pundits are speculating, making noise: Did HizbAllah need to drag Lebanon into this mess at this time? How can HizbAllah monopolize the decision to launch a war, to destroy the country? Others are convinced that Israel is simply intent on enforcing resolution 1559, namely to disarm HizbAllah by force. HizbAllah is asking everyone to stand form, and to be patient. This has happened before and we have triumphed. We will triumph again, they say. Whatever all this leads to, one thing is certain, the scale of the destruction is enormous. People are dying in the south and elsewhere. Too many. The bombing has moved to the north and in the past hour positions inside Syria were hit. Iran has said that were Syria to be hit, they will respond. A regional war? What's going on?

Chapter 7, Parts 1, 2 & 3: The Appeal of Popularity, Ideology and Theory: The Objectification of Art and the Abortive Protest of the Subject: The Seventh Decade

On the one side, Donald Judd, Frank Stella and Andy Warhol, on the other side Eva Hesse, Robert Smithson and Joseph Beuys, to elevate to exemplary status only a few of the many artists working on opposites sides of the great divide -- the brutal dialectic -- of ‘60s art. For the former, the work of art is a "specific object," to use Judd’s famous term. For the latter, the work of art is the expressive byproduct of a "therapeutic process," to use Beuys’ important idea. On the one hand, there is the use of "real materials in real space" to construct "an object" which is "the whole idea without any confusion," to use Stella’s words. "Confusion" is caused by social and subjective import. As Stella writes, "only what can be seen there is there." This statement resembles Warhol’s remark -- it was made about the same time, and with the same smug coolness -- that "there’s nothing behind. . . the surface of my paintings and films and me." This is usually understood to be ironical, but it is, in fact, an honest acknowledgement of the lack of depth in all three artists.

Continued on ArtNet Magazine

Video and Audio Evidence, an Outraged Citizenry, and Panic from the White House Are Converging to Make Lo'pez Obrador the Next Mexican President

By Al Giordano
Part III of a Special Series for The Narco News Bulletin

July 11, 2006
This report appears on the internet at
http://www.narconews.com/Issue42/article1972.html

At six p.m. last night, Monday, July 10, neighbors of the office of the

Members of Mexico's losing leftist party are invoking America's recent electoral scandals to convince the world that last Sunday's presidential election was fixed.

By Eliza Barclay

July 8, 2006 | MEXICO CITY -- "Ciberfraude," or cyberfraud, is not a word in the average Mexican's vocabulary. But most Mexicans have heard of the extraordinary electoral debacle that befell their neighbors to the north in 2000, and Martí Batres, the head of the Democratic Revolutionary Party's Mexico City chapter, was going to capitalize on that knowledge. At a press conference Friday afternoon at PRD headquarters, the close advisor to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist politician who lost an exceedingly close election here this week, nodded to an aide to turn on his laptop. "And now I'm going to show you a video," he told the roomful of reporters.

It’s always a surprise when I check the visitor stats on RANTAPOD http://spaghetti.nujus.net/rantapod . For July 4th & 5th there were visitors from, Oman, Hong Kong, USA, Turkey, Austria, Canada, UK, Denmark, Spain, Italy, India and Finland. For some of the visitors, I can ascertain the reason for their visit. For instance, my rant about the Turkish denial of the Armenian Genocide is the most likely reason for the visit from Turkey. Indeed, there is a global subculture of political commentary that ranges from terrorist recruitment sites to street art collectives http://www.woostercollective.com/ .