Well, I'd heard some rumors, but today it became true. Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff is going to use the waiver power given to him under little-known section 102 of the RealID Act to ignore all laws on the entire U.S.-Mexico border, so that the department can go ahead and build the border wall and not have to deal with any more legal challenges.

As of March 17, there were 309 miles of fencing in place, leaving 361 to be completed by the end of the year to meet the department's goal. Of those, 267 miles are being held up by federal, state and local laws and regulations, the officials said... building in some areas requires assessments and studies that

• steev's blog

I've been using Good Reads a lot to review books and get tips from friends of good stuff they're reading.

Last week I read a book called "Unmarketable." It has a detailed and workable plan for resisting and totally destroying all commercial marketing everywhere and then in fact eradicating corporate consumer culture completely! It's a great book!

April Fools.

No, actually, the book was kind of underwhelming.

A lot of it is old hat to me, the copyright stuff, etc, but it documents some very recent developments in marketing that are extremely disturbing.

If you've already read books like Conquest of Cool, No Logo, Captains of Conciousness, or been reading zines like Stay Free!, this is not going to be a really useful or revelatory book.

Overall, i was disappointed because the book doesn't really provide many solutions. there's a chapter at the end called "taking dissent off the market", but it only provides one example, and a pretty tepid one, of people trying to fight and answer these latest trends in marketing. it also didn't address a fundamental question: why do some people not "get it"? Why do people, even people involved with "underground" or DIY expression, not "get" that it's a political act, and that you're helping to dilute and destroy integrity every time you go over to the other side? I guess it's just like every other political issue - some see the problem, others are just living blissfully stupid and happy. And I suppose some might say that about me (like maybe some think i'm a blissfully stupid idiot for not agreeing that fighting for impeachment of Bush is vitally important and worthy of my time).

Anyway, the book mostly just created a sense of hopelessness, and a depressed feeling that the only way to really prevail over corporate hegemony is some sort of a Fight Club style destruction of our entire civilization. sigh.