Crickets > Hildegard Westerkamp [1]
That's My Honeybee > 101 Strings [2]
Worm Is Not A Human > John Schnall [3]
Move 1 Bee Drone Mix > Ned Bouhalassa [4]
Spindle Spider > Janek Schaefer [5]
Triomphe des Mouches > Univers Zero
Das Insekt > Der Plan
L'Insect > Tom Novembre
Tsetse Fly > Sofa Surfers [6]
The Butterfly Collector > Garbage [7]
Closet Birds > Ellen Band [8]
Ellen Birds > If, Bwana [9]
Birds > Ben Schott [10]
Albatross > Fleetwood Mac [11]
Albatross > Watermelon [12]
Swallow Tail > Tipsy [13]
An Eagle in My Mind > Boards of Canada [14]
Sweetbird > Joni Mitchell [15]
Night Tawny Owl [Welkya] [16]
Yellowbird > Eartha Kitt [17]
Tequila Mockingbird > John Schnall [3]
Condor > Zion Train [18]
Be Kind to Your Web-Footed Friends > Ray Heatherton
Chicken in a Box > Mr. Scruff [19]
Reptile Room > Pitch Black [20]
Snake in a Hole > African Head Charge [21]
Snakes & Ladders [exc] > Typhoon Tosh [22]
Sea Otter > Zion Train [18]
Skunk Funk > LS Diesel meets Digidub [23]
Dutiful Ducks [exc] > Charles Amirkhanian
Rightwing Pigeon > Dead Milkmen [24]
Product Crow > Sand [25]
Sand Rabbit > Bask [26]
Fire Fishes > Tymon Dogg
Neon Tetra > Tipsy [13]
Tennessee Toad > Leo Kottke [27]
My Dog Eats Beats > Console [28]
Dog Day Chicada > Bovine Life [29]
Was Dog A Donut > Jellybean Benitez
The Barking Dogs vs The Minimalists > Henry Kaiser
Old Dogs New Tricks Intro > Allen Levi [30]
Zoodie Doggie Va Zie > Black Sifichi vs Black Dog [31]
Dog > Bob Dorough [32]
Rain Dogs > Tom Waits [33]
Man Is Dog > Chienne [34]
Aux Chiens Ecrases > Gel [35]
El Pussycat > Roland Alphonse
Cat Ska > Také Rodriguez & His Exotic Arkestra [36]
Go Cat > Pig Bag [36a]
Nuclear Cats Get New Home > Blitter vs Hrvatski [37]
Don't Dress Your Cat in an Apron > Billy de Wolfe [38]
Leopard > Fan Simmons [39]
My Dog Is A Plumber > Dick Cavett [38]
Dogs Dicks & Cats Cunts > Costes vs Toshi Hiraoka [40]
Lady & the Tiger > Toyah & Fripp
Lady & the Tiger > Playmates
The Lion Sleeps Tonight > John Schnall [3]
Kitten > Thermos [41]
Mad Cat > Roni Size [42]
Dogs in the Mix > Norscq [43]
Funky Sharks > Maschinenschlosser [44]
Arabian Horses > Signs of Chaos [45]
Elephant Songs > Rainforest Pygmies
Donkey Stroke > Bullitnuts [46]
Elephant > Zion Train [18]
Rats de Villes, Rats de Champs > Positive Black Soul [47]
Yodeling Mule > Three Tobacco Tags [48]
Pinto, Pony & I > Topp Twins [49]
Couer de Poulet > Xavier Boussiron [50]
Jongens, Meisjes aan de Kant Want er Komt 'n Olifant > De Band Krijgt Kinderen [51]
The Whale Zoo > Clive Pig & The Hopeful Chinamen
Delaware Pig Attraction > Gawk [52]
Stegasaurus > Beachflea [53]
Le Renard et La Rose > Robert Normandeau [54]

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[*] It was great to have Black Sifichi as my special guest. He is one of my dearest friends and it’s always a big thrill to do yet another collaboration with him. We used to do regular discumbobulations on Radio Libertaire 1988-91. But now he has really moved to the position where he has a verifiable effect on the nocturnal zeitgeist of Paris as DJ, as radiomaker and visual artist and all around spirit in the air. Like a dervish spinning around his own records. Look for recent collaborations of his with Burnt Friedman and Black Dog. More info at: <http://webperso.easynet.fr/blkdix/>. Also look for his excellent «Tick» on Noise Museum.

[1] "Transformations" on Empreintes Digitales <info@electrocd.com> <www.electrocd.com>. ED is a great label of enterprising experiments in psycho-electrical-acoustic works. Amazing stuff they put out including Francis Dhomont, Claude Schreyer, H. Westerkamp and many others. The odd thing is, is why Canada is so in the forefront of electro-acoustic work? Soundscape philosophy as well? Most of this stuff is of extremely marginal value in the USA but in Canada it seems to be part of the dialectic. In the forefront of confronting our natural ambience and how technology and humans have impact on this is HW. She developed her soundwalks in the 80s which entailed a kind aural equivalent of the Situationists Dérive. «Cricket Voice is a musical expression of a cricket, whose song I recorded in the stillness of a Mexican desert region called the zone of Silence.»

[2] «Love is Blue» on Europa vinyl is one of those strange sound documents — it is basically hippie muzak as performed by the 101 Strings, the Spots, and the Petards. Great cover of a sloe-eyed bleach blond naked except for the body paint rendered in typical LSD-inspired swirling patterns that give all these kinds of rip-off documents a kind of post-modern kitsch feel. Liner Notes are typical psychotropic youth hype: « With the youth polsion taking place around the world, the late 1960s finds young people creating exciting new trends in the arts and music. Fresh new sounds from electric guitars, swinging organs, indian sitars and all sorts of percussion instruments and electronic sounds, to create the moods of beat and psychedelia. These are the refelctions of the restless new generation of people in their teens and twenties…»

[3] "The Best of Midnight Matinee" on private CDR. I interviewed JS <schnall@home.com> by email. He is as quick to the draw as he was in our days when our radio shows ran back to back. But now his aim is better and he's much less likely to shoot his foot off into his mouth. Imagine a collaboration between John Oswald & the Smurfs in the Plunderphonics studio. Imagine Ren & Stimpy wreaking havoc in the Negativland studios... He has an unhealthy predilection to naming songs after animals as well. Is he traumatized by a missing teddy Bear or something?

[4] Sound Trafic Control (from San Francisco) presents "Swarm of Drones" on Asphodel <http://www.asphodel.com> 1995. From the liner notes: «Based on an idea of representing animal/human movement through sound. Move I explores the possibilities of generating rich, evolving textures from single samples. Particularly effective when heard through headphones…»

[5] Janek Schaefer - from his album "Above Buildings" Fat Cat Recordings <http://www.fat-cat.co.uk>. Janek Schaefer <janek@audiOh.com> is a sound designer, experimentalist and performer. Noted for his double tone-arm turntable with a pitch control going from 1 to 100 rpm. <http://www.fat-cat.co.uk/artists/janek.html>

[6] "Hi Tek steppas meet the Demon Flowers" on Klein Records <http://www.kleinrecords.com/>. A remix by this excellent group from Vienna.

[7] "Fire & Skill" on Ignition is a disc of Jam cover versions.

[8] «90% Post Consumer Sound» on XI <www.xirecords.org> <audiblevisions@ellenband.com> <www.ellenband.com>. I have always thought [and played a number of tiumes] her piece «Railroad Gamelan» was a fantastic piece of Electro-acoustic composition and anthropological-sonic brilliance. This piece completes the sub-theme of birds. It seems to be a companion piece to If, Bwana’s birdy piece, mechanical paradise, ersatz nature confabulations [I like that word – it sounds like furniture of the imagination]. A great record.

[9] «33 Birds Went» on Pogus <www.pogus.com>. Pogus is the little brother of labels like XI and Empreintes Digitales. It used to be a very active cassette label, Sound of Pig, devoted to unusual and adventurous musics. I’ve had the fortune to perform with Al Margolis, head of Pogus. One time he and premier bassist [Fist of Facts], Dave Mandl surprised me by instead of showing up with 2 basses to play atmospheric noir background music for my reading from novel CONFESSIONS OF A BEER MYSTIC with 2 suitcases full of toy instruments and noisemakers. And I had to ... adjust. It turned out great in the old Tin Pan Alley, socialist bar in the middle of Broadway, with a hole in the ceiling...

[10] "Preeweet!" on Time Stereo <TIME-STEREO@prodigy.net> The title comes from James Joyce's "Chamber Music" and to quote Joyce: "And hear you not the thrushes calling, calling us away..." This is a tremendous CD of electronically enhanced sounds of nature, nature by night is how it feels. I used to live in Michigan and found the lower peninsula to be a barren kind of land approaching wasteland. But these are the birds of and around Livonia, MI. given shape to the point where they sound symphonic.» From a press release: «About the artist: Dutch artist Ben Schot was born on a small, isolated island in the south of Holland, where his father made a living as a fisherman. After having finished high school in 1971 Schot took a degree in English studies, left his native island and attended the art schools of The Hague and Rotterdam. Since then he has explored the imaginary in various forms. He has dealt with subjects as various as psychedelia, insanity, mimicry in nature, optical illusions, otherworldliness, fiction and fictitious works of art. Besides his visual works, he has written several books and organized projects on the films of surrealist Jean Painlevé, the French literary movement OULIPO, the films of William Burroughs, the Residents, Sun Ra (in cooperation with René van der Voort and Ronald Cornelissen), and in 1998 - together with Ronald Cornelissen - the project I RIP YOU, YOU RIP ME on Detroit's high-energy, psychedelic culture. Schot has recently started a new project with the publishing house Sea Urchin Editions (E.A. Poe, Serge Gainsbourg, André Breton/Philippe Soupault, and others to come) Visit Sea Urchin Editions at: <http://www.sea-urchin.net>

[11] Some greatest Hits reissue on Warwick. I left the record at Patapoe after playing that same song again a week later! What has come over me?

[12] "Fish Smell Like Cat" Compilation on Pussyfoot <http://www.pussyfoot.co.uk> messed up but nice version of the Fleetwood Mac classic by Peter Green.

[13] from the album "Uh-Oh" on Asphodel <http://www.asphodel.com/artists/tipsy/index.shtml>

[14] "Music Has the Right to Children" 1998 on Warp <http://www.warprecords.com/warp/>

[15] «The Hissing of Summer Lawns» on Asylum Records vinyl. I declare her a much maligned genius who pissed off her prissy folkie fans by going far afield in her choice of material. She has recently been praised by Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth.

[16] «Welkya» by theodosii Spassov & friends on Gega New from Sofia, Bulgaria. Was brought back from Bulgaria by Nina. Who stayed in a hotel where they changed the rug in the elevator every day with the day of the week on it. Was that for drunken conference goers…? Liner notes: «Let the Welkya carry you away…»

[17] "Eartha Kitt - Earthquake cd # 4" on Bear Family Records <http://www.bear-family.de/php/getArtists.php> A collection of 5 CD's of great Earth Kitt songs. Classy, brassy, sexy, and provocative. The true International woman gliding between NYC, Istanbul, Paris and Berlin. When Cocktail hours were a 24 hour affair.

[18] "Secrets of the Animal Kingdom in Dub" on Universal Egg <http://wobblyweb.com> vinyl. Excellent concept album. ALL animals! Double record.

[19] «Mr Scruff» on Ninja Tune <http://www.mrscruff.com/> amusing site with nice little drawings and animations. <http://www.ninjatune.net/ninja/releases/ninjasingles/zens80/text.html>

[20] «Electronomicon» on Kog <www.kog.co.nz> is one of those beautifully flawless dub productions that reminds you of how capable we humans are of transcending the body. There are all sorts of psychic vents that allow us entry into the slip stream... Their seamless combination of organic ambiences + electronicized sonic scapes + the roots skanking beats + acid-derived riffing + bass heavy ballast and a sense of dub that allows their music to never sound contrived or edgng into the territory of schlock and glop. They might sound like cousins of Zion Train Went to see PB at the Melkweg in Amsterdam on a rare night out as the little bodily dynamo known as my daughter has changed my entire relationship to time. The evening begannicely with Jasper from Dubmission bascally Djing for ½ hour to anear empty Oude Zaal. And when the duo known as PB came on stage they made it clear why dub is appreciated in New Zealand. They are on top of the game of trance dub -- deep ambient reverberent rhythms that encourage psychic transportation and enough enthusiastic gymnastics and gizmo improv on stage to keep you enthralled and intellect trained. Michael on the knobs a kind of solid impassive presence that mad-capped kinetic Paddy could bounce off of. This disc is that perfect dynamic tension, that fervent weld between live mayhem and machinistic control. The subtle building of tracks based on various trance hums and rhythm patterns is both subtle and invigorating

[21] «Great Vintage Volume 2» on On-U. AHC is one of the truly groundbreaking and earth shattering bands of the 80s. One of the truly revolutionary sounds. Period.

[22] "Fish Smell Like Cat" Compilation on Pussyfoot. http://www.pussyfoot.co.uk/

[23] «King Size Dub Volume 1» what a killer intro to the Echo Beach strategy. Old meets new. Deep dark dub meets electrical ecstasy. Revamped, reconstituted, rereleased … repeatrepeat. Shows where Echo Beach cuts into its deep grooves – roots with On-U which is the label where respect for the past met the excitement of the future. Echo Beach continues this tradition. Includes Revolutionary Dub Warriors, Disciples, Zion Train, Bim Sherman, Small Axe, Dub Syndicate, Iration Steppas, Rootsman and more.

[24] They were big in the late 80s. Cynical whiney snotty and post-punk.

[25] on Satellite

[26] «The Eccentric Sounds of Vienna II» on Spray <spray@bertelsmann.de> is a nice primer that once again shows that globalisation has its interestingly stimulating effects when it comes to the arts — a wild potpourri of styles running hot to cold, pop to experimental, dub and roots...and all in staid Vienna. Was Vienna the Seattle of the late 90s? And don’t both these towns claim to serve an indescribable cup of coffee?

[27] «Leo Kottke: 6 & 12 String guitar» on Takoma vinyl, is one of my faves. Kottke is great but also someone endowed with self-effacing humor. His tongue-in-cheek liner notes note: «Kottke is for all intents and purposes nowhere and nothing. He was the first to admit this when confronted by interviewers in Ft William, Canada after his abortive attempt to stowaway on a boat leaving to tour Lake Superior. It may seem odd, with hindsight, that after being aroused by reality in Wyoming, K. should retreat from it in Oklahoma. … Finally consider K.’s voice which sounds like geese farts on a muggy day.»

[28] Console (aka Martin Gretschmann) Dog Eats Beats from Rocket in The Pocket on Payola. <http://www.matadorrecords.com/console/>

[29] "Social Electrics" on Bip Hop out of Marseille, France <www.bip-hop.com>. Is the sound strategy moniker of UK filmmaker Chris Dooks <info@bovine.org.uk> which is a hodgepodge tapestry of [re]sourced sonic bits. He collaborates with other international electronic bedroom musicians via the internet and mp3 sonic dialogs. Very interesting.

[30] «Old Dogs New Tricks» on Tyler. New country, old sentiments.

[31] "Black Sifichi Bitten By the Black Dog - Unsavoury Products" advance CDR - Hydrogen Dukebox. "3rd September 2001. We are presently putting the finishing touches to our collaboration withperformance artist and poet Black Sifichi. The resulting tribute to William Seward Burroughs is called Unsavoury Products and will be released by our friends at Hydrogen Dukebox." <http://www.dogsquad.com/> <http://www.hydrogendukebox.com/>

[32] «Pictures From The Gone World»

[33] "Rain Dogs" on Island records.

[34] «Chienne: We’re Pals» on Chienne Productions cassette. This is one of my fave DIY cassettes which combines the best of the Residents with Shonen Knife and all from Quebec! Circa 1983.

[35] "!"on Artefact <http://www.chronowax.com> <http://www.metafort.org/ecoute/concerts/index.htm>

[36] "Pssion De Ritmo" on Sonic Plate < http://www.wombat.or.jp/nascacar/hige_SP.html

[36a] on Stiff. One of the great punk funk combos arising out of one of the most legendary bands of all time, the Pop Group, also see Rip Rig & Panic and Mark Stewart & the Maffia… Great stuff.

[37] "Mind the Gap #24" on Gonzo Circus. Great sound magazine if you read Dutch : <http://home.planetinternet.be/gonzocircus/gonzo-uk/gonzo41-uk.htm>

[38] «Free To Be You & Me» on Arista with Marlo Thomas, Alan Alda, Mel Brooks, rosey Grier, Tom Smothers, Diana Ross, and despite all that a kind of cleverly giggly album with snappy lyrics.

[39] "The Leopard" from The LP «Last States of Nature». Ian Simmonds is one of the pople who has made sure that the label Trip-hop is still an open base. «The Last states of Nature» and «Return to X» are both excellent releases worth listening to. <http://www.k7.com/> <http://www.k7.com/data.pl?release=k7r022>

[40] «No Sex boy» on Hard Disc International. Recorded in Tokyo & Paris in 1993.

[41] No idea - oops

[42] "From the album "New Forms" on Mercury

[43] «Palo Alto 'Pogs Box» on land records <http://conapt-sounds.com> Norrsq: <http://norscq.free.fr/>

[44] «Orange Noise» on dbelltime <www.dbelltime.at> is excellent electronic trance in the old sense of the word. Yes, mind full of idle thoughts transported. But it has enough glitches and blippy diversions and layers of sound to constitute as post-jazzy improvs on hums and mantras. There are also wonderful flitty flighty hints at abstract humor. Check out his very interesting version of «La Internacional».

[45] "Departure" on Medcom/Roadrunner <http://www.tiny-home-central.freeserve.co.uk/signs.html>

[46] "Submerged Part 2" on Incoming

[47] "Salaam Salaam" on Island [

48] «American Yodeling: 1911-1946» on Trikont <kommentar@trikont.de>. This is another excellent anthropological masterpiece. It combines scholarship with rip-roaring yodeling fun. Inc: Emmett Miller, Patsy Montana, Roy rogers, Carter Family, Wilf Carter…

[49] «Grass Highway» on EMI is a lovely record of lovely vocals. <www.topptwins.co.nz>. You will hearing more from this lesbian duo from New Zealand.

[50] "Rien Qu'un Coeur de Poulet " des airs de Roy Orbison on DRAC Aquitaine <http://www.culture.fr/culture/regions/dracs/idf/boussiron/boussiron.html>

[51] «Ook Klein, Klein Kleutertje Houdt Van Pop» [the little one also likes pop] on Junior is a great record by a bunch of old Dutch pop stars who have become parents. They do great ska, new wave, punky and thumped up versions of a lot of Dutch childrens songs. <www.mirasound.nl/junior>

[52] «Tongue» on Offshore <www.walrus.com/~offshore> is a rehashed greatest noise bites from the ex-Carbon bassist. He still hasn’t sent me his latest.

[53] from the compilation "Abstract Workshop" on Shadow Records faeturing other tracks byThe Herbaliser, Ute, 9 Lazy 9, DJ Krush, Funci Porcini.... >>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<< SPEAKING OF ANIMALS #1:

God Gave U.S. 'What We Deserve,' Falwell Says

By John F. Harris <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28620-2001Sep14.html>

Television evangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, two of the most prominent voices of the religious right, said liberal civil liberties groups, feminists, homosexuals and abortion rights supporters bear partial responsibility for Tuesday's terrorist attacks because their actions have turned God's anger against America.

"God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve," said Falwell, appearing yesterday on the Christian Broadcasting Network's "700 Club," hosted by Robertson…

Falwell said the American Civil Liberties Union has "got to take a lot of blame for this," again winning Robertson's agreement: "Well, yes."

Then Falwell broadened his blast to include the federal courts and others who he said were "throwing God out of the public square." He added: "The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'

I excerpt here mainly the list of atrocities from the excellent impassioned and articulte article by Larry Mosqueda, Ph.D., The Evergreen State College, September 15, 2001, who offers in the words of fellow DJ Pieter B. a «thorough, if not exhaustive one fears, listing of US atrocities since WW II.» For complete article: <http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=64836>

• «…I continue to be horrified by the sanctions on Iraq, which have resulted in the death of over 1,000,000 Iraqis, including over 500,000 children, about whom former Secretary of State Madeline Allbright has stated that their deaths "are worth the cost".

• I have been shocked and horrified by a variety of U.S. governmental actions, such as the U.S. sponsored coup against democracy in Guatemala in 1954 which resulted in the deaths of over 120,000 Guatemalan peasants by U.S. installed dictatorships over the course of four decades.

• [PLUS] the U.S.overthrew the government of the Dominican Republic in 1965 and helped to murder 3,000 people.

• the U.S. sponsored a coup in Chile against the democratic government of Salvador Allende and helped to murder another 30,000 people, including U.S. citizens.

• the U.S. sponsored a coup in Indonesia that resulted in the murder of over 800,000 people, and the subsequent slaughter in 1975 of over250,000 innocent people in East Timor by the Indonesian regime with the direct complicity of President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissenger.

• the U.S.sponsored terrorist contra war (the World Court declared the U.S. government a war criminal in 1984 for the mining of the harbors) against Nicaragua in the 1980s which resulted in the deaths of over 30,000 innocent people (or as the U.S. government used to call them before the term "collateral damage" was invented — "soft targets").

• the U. S. war against the people of El Salvador in the 1980s, which resulted in the brutal deaths of over 80,000 people, or "soft targets".

• the U.S.sponsored terror war against the peoples of southern Africa (especially Angola) that began in the 1970's and continues to this day and has resulted in the deaths and mutilations of over 1,000,000.

• the U.S. invaded Panama over the Christmas season of 1989 and killed over 8,000 in an attempt to capture George H.Bush's CIA partner, now turned enemy, Manual Noriega.

• the Shah of Iran was installed in a U.S. sponsored brutal coup that resulted in the deaths of over 70,000 Iranians from 1952-1979.

• the Ayatollah Khomani, who overthrew the Shah in 1979,and who was the U.S. public enemy for decade of the 1980s, was also on the CIA payroll, while he was in exile in Paris in the 1970s.

• the U.S. has "manufactured consent" since 1948 for its support of Israel, to the exclusion of virtually any rights for the Palestinians in their native lands resulting in ever worsening day-to-day conditions for the people of Palestine

• the largest and most shocking war crime of the second half of the 20th century was the U.S. assault on Indochina from 1954-1975, especially Vietnam, where over 4,000,000 people were bombed, napalmed, crushed, shot and individually "hands on" murdered in the "Phoenix Program" (this is where Oliver North got his start).

• Many U.S. Vietnam veterans were also victimized by this war and had the best of intentions, but the policy makers themselves knew the criminality of their actions and policies as revealed in their own words in "The Pentagon Papers," released by Daniel Ellsberg of the RAND Corporation. In 1974 Ellsberg noted that our Presidents from Truman to Nixon continually lied to the U.S. public about the purpose and conduct of the war. He has stated that, "It is a tribute to the American peoplethat our leaders perceived that they had to lie to us, it is not a tribute to us that we were so easily misled."

• the U.S. attacked and bombed with impunity the nation of Libya in the 1980s, including killing the infant daughter of Khadafi.

• the U.S. bombed and invaded Grenada in 1983.

• U.S. military and CIA actions in Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan, Brazil, Argentina, and Yugoslavia, The deaths in these actions ran into the hundreds of thousands.

The above list is by no means complete or comprehensive. It is merely a list that is easily accessible and not unknown, especially to the economic and intellectual elites. It has just been conveniently eliminated from the public discourse and public consciousness. And for the most part, the analysis that the U.S. actions have resulted in the deaths of primarily civilians (over 90%) is not unknown to these elites and policy makers. A conservative number for those who have been killed by U.S. terror and military action since World War II is 8,000,000 people…This does not include the wounded, the imprisoned, the displaced, the refugees, etc. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated in 1967, during the Vietnam War, "My government is the world's leading purveyor of violence." Shocking and horrifying. Nothing that I have written is meant to disparage or disrespect those who were victims and those who suffered death or the loss of a loved one during this week's events. It is not meant to "justify" any action by those who bombed the Twin Towers or the Pentagon. It is meant to put it in a context.

Ed Herman in his book The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda does not justify any terrorism but points out that states often engage in "wholesale" terror, while those whom governments define as "terrorist" engage is "retail" terrorism. While qualitatively the results are the same for the individual victims of terrorism, there is a clear quantitative difference. And as Herman and others point out, the seeds, the roots, of much of the "retail" terror are in fact found in the "wholesale" terror of states. Again this is not to justify, in any way, the actions of last Tuesday, but to put them in a context and suggest an explanation. Perhaps most shocking and horrific, if indeed Bin Laden is the mastermind of Tuesday's actions; he has clearly had significant training in logistics, armaments, and military training, etc. by competent and expert military personnel. And indeed he has. During the 1980s,he was recruited, trained and funded by the CIA in Afghanistan to fight against the Russians. As long as he visited his terror on Russians and his enemies in Afghanistan, he was "our man" in that country. The same is true of Saddam Hussein of Iraq, who was a CIA asset in Iraq during the 1980s. Hussein could gas his own people, repress the population, and invade his neighbor (Iran) as long as he did it with U.S. approval. The same was true of Manuel Noriega of Panama, who was a contemporary and CIA partner of George H. Bush in the 1980s. Noriega's main crime for Bush, the father, was not that he dealt drugs (he did, but the U.S.and Bush knew this before 1989), but that Noriega was no longer going to cooperate in the ongoing U.S. terrorist contra war against Nicaragua. This information is not unknown or really controversial among elite policy makers. To repeat, this not to justify any of the actions of last Tuesday, but to put it in its horrifying context.

As shocking as the events of last Tuesday were, they are likely to generate even more horrific actions by the U.S. government that will add significantly to the 8,000,000 figure stated above…

Below are a few resources for up to date news and some background reading, by Noam Chomsky, the noted analyst. The titles of the books explain their relevance for this topic.

current information: http://www.commondreams.org/
how the media distorts the news: http://www.fair.org/
For background reading by Noam Chomsky see:
"Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies"
"Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media"
«Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians Deterring Democracy»
"An eye for an eye only leaves the whole world blind." Mahatma Gandhi

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bart Plantenga was born in Amsterdam, bred in the U.S. is a DJ, journalist, and novelist. He has been a DJ for 16 years (in Paris, NY, and now Amsterdam). He is the author of many radio / music / culture / esoteric articles as well as a short story collection, Wiggling Wishbone (1995). He is the author of four novels including Confessions of a Beer Mystic and Paris Sex Tête. Bart is currently writing a book about yodeling.

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