We Report. You decide.

''It's never been the case where we said we would never provide access,'' Gonzales told reporters.

10 paragraphs down:

The documents are being turned over two weeks after a testy Senate hearing, during which lawmakers hammered Gonzales for refusing to provide details about the court's new oversight -- and whether it provides adequate privacy protections.

Signs You Just Might be Insane

Dreaming that you are Augustus. Shaking Brutus for making my ascendancy to Emperor of Rome so difficult.

Signs You Just Might be Insane

Dreaming about the making of my beloved baguette a l'ancienne. And when I mean the making of, I really do mean the making of: including mixing the ingredients, kneading the dough, and watching the dough rise. For whatever reason, I dreamed lengthily about watching dough rise.

Not frontin' on the music

"The [Coltrane Quartet] developed a reputation for being one of the hardest-working outfits on the road ... [and] during tours in late 1962 and '63, Europe embraced the quartet as conquering heroes. ... As accolades poured down and album sales stayed up, however, Coltrane remained humble, musically centered, spiritually focused. ...

"[Close friend] Cecelia Foster ... tells of the saxophonist's reaction to his listeners' praise:

" 'Whenever I'd say to John--me trying to be hip--'Boy, John, you really burned on that last set!' he'd look at me for a long time and say, 'What do you mean by that? What did you hear that was different?' ... When I couldn't explain, he would say, 'Don't be like so many people we know. If you can't explain what the difference was that you heard, what impressed you, just don't say anything.' He was really quite a teacher as far as I was concerned. He taught me how to listen to jazz, what to listen for, how to be humble and not frontin' on the music.' ...

"[Coltrane contemporary and jazz musician] Dave Liebman expands the thought: " 'What stays with me about the Coltrane Quartet is an image of them getting up on the bandstand ... completely burning for two hours without a word to anybody, getting off the stage and sitting down like any other person. Not having an entourage around them or anything. Then doing it again, with unpretentiousness, absolute honesty and matter-of-factness. ... I still try to live up to that image: to do your work, to do it intensely, with conviction, and be honest with the music."

Ashley Kahn, A Love Supreme, Penguin, 2002, pp. 66, 210.

The Feudal Economy

I believe that the actual economy is composed by two types of relations: balanced exchanges, where both parties have the same power to refuse or accept the transaction; and predation, where one party is in the position to impose the transaction onto the other party. Predation, compensed by charity, is the typical feudal relation (cf. Marc Bloch, The Feudal Society). Balanced exchange has been put in place with the industrial society at the beginning of the 18th century. Predation didn't disappear at this time - the mafia is a feudal organization - but it was in the industrial economy an archaïc remnant. But it is coming back with the automated and computerized economy which founds the actual technic system and in which risk and violence, both extreme, goes in pair (cf. my work "E-conomie" and also F.-X. Verschave, Noir Silence). Therefore, the economy has divided itself in two parts, one working under the balanced exchange regime, and the other under the predation regime. Shakespeare's heroes are coming back! The interface between these two parts is money-laundering, which allows the results of predation to enter the "normal" and legal circuit. Thereby, predators can acquire influence (control of the media and, through them, governments), prestige and honorability; thus bankers, politicians and magistrates that the predators have bought may enjoy in complete tranquillity the fruits of corruption... This, and not the First Employment Contract, should have provoked the demonstrations! But, as you say, the media are what predators control the best". [1] - Michel Volle