Disinformation

'The 45th New York Film Festival is something of a family affair here at the Village Voice. Two of our own, the estimable J. Hoberman and the indefatigable Scott Foundas, sit on the selection committee of this proudly selective, stubbornly steadfast institution. When it comes to NYFF 45: This time, it's personal—to borrow the tagline from Jaws: The Revenge, a movie about a creature unchanged for millennia that must perpetually move forward or die.' (Village Voice article).

'Who knew music this shit-hot could come from a mountainous Norwegian town known as the "City of Rain"? Following in the footsteps of fellow townspeople Royksopp, Kings of Convenience and Sondre Lerche, Fredrik Saroea and Ketil Mosnes formed Datarock in 2000 while students in Bergen, Norway (where "there's still lots of black metal"). Or, as Saroea once put it in an online interview, "We fell in love. He became pregnant and gave birth to a small Casio watch. As our love grew, the Casio watch grew to become a Casio keyboard. And that's how we became Datarock."

'With this week's application to build a new nuclear plant – the first such filing in nearly 30 years – the industry says the US is on the verge of a nuclear power renaissance.

'With virtually no greenhouse-gas emissions, reactors are touted as part of the solution to global warming. Over the next 15 months, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects a tidal wave of similar permit applications for up to 28 new reactors, costing up to $90 billion to build.

The following is a small portion of John Gorenfeld's "'End of the World Prophet Found in Error, Not Insane': A Failed Prophet's Survival Handbook," one of 41 articles in Disinfo's new anthology, Everything You Know About God Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Religion, edited by Russ Kick. Other contributors include Richard Dawkins, Neil Gaiman, Douglas Rushkoff, and H.G. Wells. All major religions, and some minor ones, are covered. (More information is here.)

Here is the first portion of Gorenfeld's article:

Behind the doors of the CIA and U.S. Army Intelligence, science and ESP come together like a movie in the electrifying scenes of Jim Marrs' new book, PSI Spies: the True Story of America's Psychic Warfare Program. The author of best-sellers that have revealed the secrets and the conspiracies of the Federal Government, Marrs traces in PSI Spies the evolution of remote viewing and the use of this mental technology from the hidden laboratories of the 1970s to a new generation of viewers now being trained by former PSI spies.

'2007 has been a great year for sex. OK, every year is a great year for sex. But this year is especially interesting, with reports of sexsomnia, vegansexuals, man boobs, female promiscuity, double penises, horny old folks, cosmetic vagina surgery, publicly funded sex-change surgery, and the decline of marriage and co-sleeping. Among this year's hundreds of Human Nature stories, five trends and discoveries stand out.' (Slate Magazine article).

'Ms Head's account made her one of only 19 survivors who had been at or above the point of impact when the planes hit. But no part of her story, it turns out, has been verified.

'The family and friends of the man to whom she claimed to be engaged say they have never heard of Tania Head and view the relationship she describes with the man, who did die in the north tower, as an impossibility.

'A spokeswoman for Merrill Lynch, where she told people she worked at the time of the terror attack, said the company had no record of employing a Tania Head.' (Guardian article).

'As "The Kingdom" progresses, the role of the F.B.I. squad begins to inflate. At first, under the guiding hand of the local investigator, Colonel Faris Al Ghazi (Ashraf Barhom), the agents are largely confined to their quarters and barely permitted to disturb the crime scene. As the rules relax, the film turns into "C.S.I.: Riyadh," with Sykes fishing around in bomb craters for twisted clues, and, by the end, the fantastic four—heavily and inexplicably armed, despite having been stripped of all weapons when they arrived—are up to their ears in a mad, percussive firefight in a militant patch of the city, dodging rocket-propelled grenades, kicking down doors, and generally shooting anything that doesn't speak English. Anything adult, that is: "The Kingdom," written by Matthew Michael Carnahan, is one of those violent, jaw-jutting films which like to signal a softer side, every now and then, by stooping down to address the anxieties of children.

'Did the prisoners at Leavenworth consider suing Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel for ripping off the saggy belt-less trousers they wear in the prison yard? Did hundreds of anonymous graffiti artists sue Stephen Sprouse for printing tags on Louis Vuitton satchels?' (Village Voice article).

'Not many people can tell you much about the November 1979 takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, by Islamist militants. That's partly because the Saudi authorities, as is their way, kept a tight lid on information during that fateful two-week period when the regime's survival seemed, for the first time, in danger. Little changed afterward by way of transparency (even if the Saudis released a fascinating Arabic-language video on the event, pouring opprobrium on the militants).

The following is a small portion of Sam Jordison's "'Irish Gulags for Women': The Catholic Church's Magdalene Asylums," one of 41 articles in Disinfo's new anthology, Everything You Know About God Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Religion, edited by Russ Kick. Other contributors include Richard Dawkins, Neil Gaiman, Douglas Rushkoff, and H.G. Wells. All major religions, and some minor ones, are covered. (More information is here.)

Here is the first fifth of Jordison's article:

'Eddie Van Halen's son looks like Peppermint Patty. There's no getting around it. I wish things could be different. As do, presumably, fans of Van Halen. This week, the long-beleaguered pop-metal behemoth disembalms original singer David Lee Roth for what is surely the Chinese Democracy of reunion tours, a long-threatened and oft-aborted rehash of those early-'80s glory years, before jovial, tequila-hawking asshat Sammy Hagar took over and turned the band into wusstastic chart-toppers. The Rothian diehards are (cautiously) elated. But the thorn on this particular rose lies in the absence of beloved bassist Michael Anthony, the bearlike dude with the Mickey Mouse watch collection and (lasciviously) angelic harmonies, kicked to the curb for I'm sure just totally rational reasons and replaced by . . . Eddie Van Halen's son. His name is Wolfgang. He is 16 years old.

'Kinsey's pioneering work is still one-of-a-kind because in all the time since, only a handful of sex researchers have even tried to match his breadth, depth, and scale. For all our obsession with sex, we're skittish about studying it. There's one major exception: a large survey, conducted in the 1990s, that far outdid Kinsey in terms of statistical reliability. It's the most authoritative sexual self-portrait the country has. But you've probably never heard of its author, because unlike Kinsey, he has worked hard to keep it that way.

'Dan Rather's complaint against CBS and Viacom, its parent company, filed in New York state court on Sept. 19 and seeking $70 million in damages for his wrongful dismissal as "CBS Evening News" anchor, has aroused hoots of derision from a host of commentators. They've said that the former anchor is "sad," "pathetic," "a loser," on an "ego" trip and engaged in a mad gesture "no sane person" would do, and that "no one in his right mind would keep insisting that those phony documents are real and that the Bush National Guard story is true."

'Mark Pesce points his mobile phone at this reporter for a few seconds and then, without breaking the flow of conversation, thumbs a few digits into the device. "Dude, that's on YouTube now. I'll send you the URL," he grins.

'That is the sort of connected world that Mr Pesce - a self-confessed geek, writer, educator and futurist - inhabits. It is a world where making a short film of anything that takes your fancy then posting it immediately on the internet is as natural as breathing.

The following is a small portion of H.G. Wells' "The Failure of Jesus of Nazareth," one of 41 articles in Disinfo's new anthology, Everything You Know About God Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Religion, edited by Russ Kick. Other contributors include Richard Dawkins, Neil Gaiman, and Douglas Rushkoff. All major religions, and some minor ones, are covered.

...The single largest anti-Constitutional contribution to the Bush Regime by the PAA is its effective cancellation of legislative and judicial oversight on warrantless wiretapping. When this bill was signed into law, the Constitution's separation-of-powers principle had its arms ripped off...

'What the evening news shows need is less "objectivity" and more analysis. The problem with objective journalism is that it doesn't exist and never did. Molly Ivins disposed of the objectivity question for all time when she observed in 1993, "The fact is that I am a 49-year-old white female, a college-educated Texan. All of that affects the way I see the world. There's no way in hell that I'm going to see anything the same way that a 15-year-old black high school dropout does. We all see the world from where we stand. Anybody who's ever interviewed five eyewitnesses to an automobile accident knows there's no such thing as objectivity."

'Spotted earlier in the week, lying on the desk of a lead designer at a prestigious advertising design firm: An issue of equally prestigious I.D. (International Design) Magazine, with a cover blurb announcing it as the "3rd Annual Design and Business Issue". On the cover are three sleek rectangular cellular phones in muted shades of slick plastic—one black, one white, and one in bright orange-red with its flip-down mouthpiece open to reveal a matte black keypad and a grey retro digital screen—all very elegant and chicly minimalist.

'Scrawled on the cover of this magazine in black grease pencil are two lines in smudged caps: "AFTER THE IPHONE THESE ARE ANCIENT! A SHIFT IN THE FORCE!"

'The date on this issue is June 2007.

'Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping, into the future.' (PopMatters article).

'A few weeks before Army Gen. David H. Petraeus's much-anticipated testimony on Iraq, the leadership of MoveOn.org, the Internet-based liberal group that has rallied its 3 million members around the country to oppose the war, decided on a change in strategy.

'Rather than making another appeal to moderate Republicans to join Senate Democrats in passing an antiwar resolution, they would take on the credibility of Petraeus himself. Their weapon, they decided in conjunction with Fenton Communications, its Washington-based public relations firm, would be an ad in the New York Times that provocatively played off his name with this question in large letters: "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?"' (Washington Post article).