Sunday 24 October 2010

Post Human

In 2007, the Japanese central government pledged $26 billion over ten years to develop a robot dependent society and lifestyle that is safe, comfortable and convenient. One person who is helping to make this vision a reality is Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro of Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute in Kyoto. He calls himself an Android Scientist and along with his multi disciplinary team of scientists he is creating very human-like robots or androids called Geminoids.
Why is the Japanese government pursuing such a vision? Why is it that the Japanese are able to welcome such machines into their society? Post Human explores these questions as well as providing a unique opportunity to hear scientists at the cutting edge of robotics express their hopes and fears about a future in which the lives of humans and robots are inextricably entwined.

Video feature

A moving story of love, robot style.
[Dur: 3'17" 20.2MB]

Saturday 23 October 2010

Cold

Johnny Thunders by Marcia Resnick

Stephen Fry Kinetic Typography - Language

Wikileaks Iraq war logs: Civilians have paid heaviest price


Don't want to drink my whiskey like you do...


WEER ALL CRAZY NOW!!!

The Tory Cuts

While the Tory Coalition Govt rip the shreds out of the UK with cuts in public spending of £81 billion an interesting fact might be remembered. 
VInce Cable the Business Secretary has admitted that the amount lost through tax evasion by the richest members of the UK is over £100 billion.
So why aren't this government pursuing that then?

I knew you well at The Chelsea Hotel (From Dylan to Dylan)

Although it’s been embattled and its legacy tarnished in the past few years, Manhattan’s Hotel Chelsea remains a spiritual landmark for those who remember (or simply romanticize) the old, weird New York. So it’s jarring news to learn that the Chelsea is now up for sale. Its owners claim that the place’s legacy will be preserved, and we sure hope they mean it.
To understand exactly what’s at stake here, we’ve put together a timeline of cultural events that took place at or were inspired by the Hotel Chelsea in the past 60 years. Of course, since its relationship to the art, music, and literary world is too enormous to measure, we’ve had to leave a lot out. Add your favorite Hotel Chelsea moments in the comments.
The death of Dylan Thomas (1953)

The Hotel Chelsea has been home to many poets, but perhaps its most famous was Dylan Thomas, who also died there. Notorious for consuming heroic quantities of liquor, he succumbed to an alcohol-related affliction on November 9, 1953, at the age of 39. Since then, rumors have swirled over whether it was pure quantity of drink or something to do with diabetes or a bad drug interaction that killed Thomas...
Continue reading

Cool...

Richard Hell by Marcia Resnick
30 years ago...
Where did the time go?

Land Desecration - Palestine's Olive Harvest Horror

“Lit from a blessed tree, an olive, neither of the east nor of the west, whose oil is well-nigh luminous, though fire scarce touched it … ”
Quran 24:35
Judges 15:5
Olives and olives oil. Nothing symbolizes Palestinian land, identity and culture as they do. They are the hallmarks of national pride and the veritable heart of Palestine’s agricultural economy.
Although the subjugation and daily humiliation of occupation takes various forms in East Jerusalem and the West Bank—demeaning checkpoint searches; arrest and interrogation of minors; preventing ambulances from expeditiously transporting the sick to hospitals; the eviction of families and demolition of homes—few situations evoke more outrage and deep sadness as do the torching of olive orchards by vigilante settlers.
Last Friday was the official start of the olive harvest season in the Israeli-occupied West Bank as gunfire and real fire once again heralded its opening. Hundreds of trees were burned by settlers as Israeli soldiers looked on. Fire trucks were prevented from helping put out the blaze in what has become an annual ritual of despoiling land by those who have illegally settled on it.
To coincide with the beginning of the harvest, the international relief agency Oxfam released its report, “The Road to Olive Farming: Challenges to Developing the Economy of Olive Oil in the West Bank” in Jerusalem.
Oxfam indicates that Palestinian olive oil production contributes $100 million annually to some of the poorest, most disadvantaged families and communities in the West Bank. It is a primary source of revenue for the economy and nearly half of all agricultural land use is devoted to it. As one of the territory’s major exports, the extent to which olives and olive oil contributes to employment opportunities and income for 100,000 Palestinian farming families cannot be overstated.
Yet, the Israeli government deliberately prevents access to land where olive farms are located.
“Physical barriers such as checkpoints and road blocks have restricted the free movement of people and goods within the West Bank and obstructed access for Palestinian agricultural produce, including olives and olive oil, to internal, Israeli and international markets,” the report said.
It also concluded the Israeli government sanctions settler violence against the groves, which include stealing its fruits, torching or uprooting tens of thousands of trees and attacking farmers to intimidate them from harvesting their crops.
“Settler attacks and harassment against Palestinian olive farmers are common.”
And Friday was no exception. As the AFP reported, settlers swooped down on the groves with automatic weapons, setting olive trees alight and chanting “Out, Out.”
Although this year’s violence has been characterized as one of the worst in recent history, yet nearly all assailants will likely go unprosecuted.
In a five-year study tracking 97 cases of Palestinian land vandalism, the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din (Volunteers for Human Rights) found that police investigations did not yield a single indictment. “The law enforcement authorities are not responding to the ongoing harm done to the livelihood of Palestinian families,” said lead researcher Yior Lavne.
Savaging the cultural heritage and economic viability of a people is an odious practice. Under any other circumstance, the deliberate, purposeful desecration of land and sabotage of livelihoods would be considered a war crime. It is time the international community call what happened in the West Bank last week just that.
Support Palestinian farmers through fair-trade purchase of their olive oil.
Rannie Amiri @'Counterpunch'

Friday 22 October 2010

Colorado Tea Party Candidate Suggests Biking Is Gateway Drug to Communism

HA!

G4S security guards accused over restraint of Colombian deportee

José Gutiérrez claims he was mistreated as G4S security guards attempted to deport him at Heathrow 
 The UK Border Agency has launched its second investigation this month into allegations of mistreatment of a man being forcibly deported through Heathrow after being refused asylum.
José Gutiérrez, 37, from Colombia, needed hospital attention after G4S security guards escorted him on to a British Airways flight. He was subsequently removed from the plane before take-off.
His experience – on the evening of 6 October – came only a few days before Jimmy Mubenga, a 46-year-old Angolan refugee, collapsed and died after employees of the same private security firm put him on to another BA flight at Heathrow. Gutiérrez's partner, Teresa Ramsey, contacted the Guardian after reading of Mubenga's death.
Gutiérrez, now being held at Dover immigration removal centre, claims he was mistreated in the stairwell outside the aircraft where there were no cameras.
The Guardian has seen his NHS medical notes, which show that he was admitted to Hillingdon hospital's accident and emergency department in the early hours of 7 October with swollen and tender wrists and soft tissue injury.
A letter written the same day by a doctor at the Colnbrook removal centre observed that Gutiérrez had multiple bruising or petechiae (purple skin spots caused by broken blood capillaries) on his torso, back and arms as well as tenderness over his lower abdomen.
Gutiérrez has reported his claims to the Ukba and the Independent Monitoring Boards, the watchdog responsible for overseeing prisons, immigration removal centres and short-term holding facilities at airports. G4S has launched its own investigation. Gutiérrez has now been informed he will be deported next Monday.
In a statement issued through the Home Office, the Ukba said: "This matter is subject to internal investigation and we are unable to comment. We expect the highest standards of integrity and behaviour from our staff and contractors. We take all allegations of mistreatment seriously and they are reported routinely to the appropriate authorities, including the police."
Gutiérrez said he had arrived in Britain in 1992 after refusing to join paramilitary groups that had tried to recruit him. He said that other members of his family had since been killed in the conflict, and that he fears he would be targeted if returned to Colombia.
His request for asylum in Britain was rejected, he explained, after he was given a criminal record for becoming involved in a fight.
Gutiérrez said that security guards had handcuffed him and put on a leg restraint before physically carrying him on to BA flight 247 to Sao Paulo. He claims he sustained injuries to his left hand, lower back and pelvic region outside the plane.
After he was put into a seat, he threatened to harm himself with razor blades he had smuggled on. At this point the decision was taken to remove him from the flight.
Speaking from Dover detention centre, Gutiérrez said: "The [security guards] tied my leg with a kind of belt and carried me up the stairwell. I was shouting 'please don't do this to me. I have a daughter here.' [Afterwards] they took me to Colnbrook.
"One of the officers there saw me in a state and called the nurse who examined me. She said they should take me to accident and emergency at Hillingdon hospital.
"The hospital gave me an x-ray on my left hand and checked my injuries. My soft tissue [around the pelvic area] has been bruised. I have since been passing blood. I have also seen another doctor in the detention centre."
A spokesman for the hospital, near Heathrow, confirmed that Gutiérrez had been treated in the A&E department on 7 and 8 October. "He was discharged on both occasions," the spokesman said.
Victor Fiorini, who works with the Dover Detainees Visitor Group, said he had known Gutiérrez for six months. He saw him at the Dover immigration removal centre a week after the failed deportation. "He was very shaken," Fiorini said. "He had bruises on his back and his stomach. He couldn't walk properly. There were also bruises on his arm. He tells me he has nightmares now."
In response, a G4S spokesperson said: "We can confirm that a complaint has been lodged with Ukba by a Mr Gutiérrez regarding an attempted deportation conducted by G4S officers in October 2010. A formal investigation has been launched by Ukba, which G4S will co-operate with fully. In addition G4S has launched its own investigation into the alleged incident."
Three security guards who work for G4S have been arrested and bailed by police investigating the circumstances of Jimmy Mubenga's death. British Airways declined to comment on the case.
G4S describes itself as "the world's leading international security solutions group" and "the second largest private employer" on Earth. It has 595,000 employees.
Founded in 1901, it has grown to incorporate numerous security companies including Securicor, Group 4, and Falck in Europe, as well as the US-based Wackenhut Corporation and Armorgroup. It operates in 110 countries.
In the UK it runs immigration detention centres on behalf of the UK Border Agency at Dungavel in Scotland, Oakington near Cambridge, as well as Brook House and Tinsley House on the perimeter of Gatwick Airport. Oakington is due to close next month.
G4S manages four prisons on behalf of the Prison Service: HMP Wolds in Hull, HMP Altcourse in Liverpool, HMP Parc in Bridgend and HMP Rye Hill near Rugby.
The firm is the main contractor providing services to escort those removed from the UK on repatriation flights overseas. Among its international security customers are Baghdad international airport.
Owen Bowcott, Paul Lewis and Matthew Taylor @'The Guardian'

Carrie Brownstein from Sleater-Kinney remembers Ari Up

Do you ever just feel like you're tired of people dying? Your friends die and your heroes die and it's just a sh** reminder that one day we're all going to die. Last night we learned that Arianna Forster, a.k.a Ari Up from The Slits, has passed away after a serious illness. She was only 48 years old. The Slits! THE SLITS!
The Slits were a life-changing band that made life-changing music. What does life-changing mean? It means someone puts a song on a mix tape or throws a record on and you stop dead in your tracks because now, whatever path you were on no longer exists. In that moment, you think of histrionic and cliche things such as "from this day forward" and "from here on out," and you hope to God you have the conviction to follow through with all the things this music has inspired you to do. And, hey, you don't always do them, or all of them, but the fact that some song like "Typical Girls" — with it's swirling punch punch punch of a melody — makes you think that you're capable and bold and a little on fire, well isn't that what music is for?
Not once did a Slits song cease to amaze me, not after repeat listens, literally hundreds of listens. Not once did they fail to excite or inspire me, to make me a worshipper of rhythm, chaos and of attitude. The Slits were giants and they only grew bigger and more potent over the years. Their album Cut — on which the band is pictured topless and caked in mud — is nothing short of a pinnacle. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that Cut sat there in the record collections — of both musicians and fans - -as the dynamic, the sound and the uniqueness for which to strive.
But the Slits and Ari Up were and are inimitable — a singular and spectacular force. That's why I'm so shocked and saddened that Ari Up is gone, it creates a glaring hole in a sonic legacy short on pioneers. Damn. So tough.
BONUS:
The Slits
from Caroline Coon's '1988'

Thursday 21 October 2010

Paul Kelly interviewed by Robert Forster (Athanaeum Theatre, Melbourne October 2010)




Download (Part 1)
Flash Video (.flv): 81 MB
MP3 Audio (.mp3): 15 MB
MPEG Video (.m4v): 75 MB

Download (Part 2)
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MP3 Audio (.mp3): 28 MB
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♪♫ Bowie & Cher Medley


RIP - Ari Up


"The loss of Arri-Upp of the Slits is devastating not only for those like me who got to frolic and skank with her for three decades plus, but for music. A genuinely original free spirit, Arri at 14 showed us how to be a punk. In many ways, she was the soul of the movement, specially the Punky Reggae Party people. An incredible songwriter, lyricist and a conscious hurricane onstage. Miss you, sister."

 
In The Beginning (studio and live w/ Neneh Cherry)
Man Next Door/Version
Animal Space/Animal Spacier
Earthbeat/Dub
The Slits live @ Erics, Liverpool 1977
HERE

I don't usually watch TV


Johann Hari: A colder, crueller country – for no gain

Margaret Thatcher is lying sick in a private hospital bed in Belgravia but her political children have just pushed her agenda further and harder and deeper than she ever dreamed of. When was the last time Britain's public spending was slashed by more than 20 per cent? Not in my mother's lifetime. Not even in my grandmother's lifetime. No, it was in 1918, when a Conservative-Liberal coalition said the best response to a global economic crisis was to rapidly pay off this country's debts. The result? Unemployment soared from 6 per cent to 19 per cent, and the country's economy collapsed so severely that they lost all ability to pay their bills and the debt actually rose from 114 per cent to 180 per cent. "History doesn't repeat itself," Mark Twain said, "but it does rhyme."
George Osborne has just gambled your future on an extreme economic theory that has failed whenever and wherever it has been tried. In the Great Depression, we learned some basic principles. When an economy falters, ordinary people – perfectly sensibly – cut back their spending and try to pay down their debts. This causes a further fall in demand, and makes the economy worse. If the government cuts back at the same time, then there is no demand at all, and the economy goes into freefall. That's why virtually every country in the world reacted to the Great Crash of 2008 – caused entirely by deregulated bankers – by increasing spending, funded by temporary debt. Better a deficit we repay in the good times than an endless depression. The countries that stimulated hardest, like South Korea, came out of recession first.
David Cameron and George Osborne have ignored all this. They have ignored the warnings of the Financial Times, the newspaper most critical of their strategy. They have dismissed the warnings of Nobel economics laureates like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, who have consistently been proved right in this crisis. They have refused to learn from the fact that the country they held up as a model for how to deal with a recession – "Look and learn from across the Irish Sea," Osborne said – has suffered the worst collapse in the developed world. They have instead blindly obeyed the ideological precepts they learned as baby Thatcherites: slash the state, and make the poor pay most.
Osborne galloped through his Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) speech, failing to name almost any of the services that will be slashed or shut down. It's revealing that he doesn't want to name them while the nation is watching.
But beneath the statistics, there was a swathe of human tragedies that will now unnecessarily unfold across Britain. PriceWaterhouseCooper – nobody's idea of a Trotskyite cell – says that a million people will now lose their jobs as a direct result. My father lost his job at the height of the last Tory recession, and had to leave the country to get another one. I remember how that felt. I remember what that did to my family.
Now it's going to happen to a million more families and probably more. For the private sector to get all these people into work, as Osborne claims, there would have to be the most rapid business growth in my lifetime. Does anyone think that will happen? Osborne has chosen the weakest people to take the worst cuts. The poorest 16-year-olds were given £30 a week to stay on in education, so they could afford to study – until Osborne's team dismissed it as a "bribe" and shut it down. The frailest old people depend on council services to wash them and feed them – yet Osborne just slashed their budget by 30 per cent, which service providers say will mean more pensioners being left to die in their own filth. Every family living on benefits is set to lose an average of £1,000 a year – which, as I've seen from living in the East End of London, will mean many poor kids across Britain never getting a birthday party, or a trip to the seaside, or a bed of their own, or a winter coat. This isn't just On Yer Bike, it's On Yer Own.
The irrationality of this approach is perhaps plainest when you look at housing. We badly need more affordable housing in Britain. Some 4.5 million people are stuck on waiting lists, and the average age of a homebuyer is now 37. It's a cause of constant stress to the real middle class and despair for the poor. By a happy coincidence, house-building is one of the best stimulators of the economy: it employs a lot of people on average wages, who then spend their money quickly in a "multiplier" effect.
Yet Osborne has chosen the opposite. There will be on average one new home built per week in the whole of London and the south-east. That's one. Indeed, instead of building homes, he's driving people out of them. By slashing housing benefit, London councils alone say 83,000 people here are going to be forced to leave their homes, with 1.3 million ending up in more debt. Cameron has revealed that his baby daughter sleeps in a cardboard box decorated for her by her big sister. Thanks to him, a lot more people are going to be sleeping in cardboard boxes soon.
It can't be coincidental that this is being done to us by three men – Cameron, Osborne, and Nick Clegg – who have never worried about a bill in their lives. On a basic level, they do not understand the effects of these decisions on real people. Remember, Cameron said before the election: "The papers keep writing that [my wife, Samantha] comes from a very blue-blooded background", but "she is actually very unconventional. She went to a day school." Osborne is a beneficiary of a £4m trust fund he did nothing whatsoever to earn and which is stashed offshore to avoid tax. Clegg actually thought the state pension was £30 a week, a level that would kill pensioners.
These attitudes have real consequences. We're not in this together. Who isn't in it with us? Them, their friends, and their families. They were asked to pay nothing more in this CSR. On the contrary: they are being let off left, right and centre. To pluck a random example, one of the richest corporations in Britain, Vodafone, had an outstanding tax bill of £6bn – but Osborne simply cancelled it this year. If he had made them pay, he could have prevented nearly all the cuts to all the welfare recipients in Britain. You try refusing to pay your taxes next time, and see if George Osborne shows the same generosity to you as he does to the super-rich.
There is one stark symbol of how unjust the response to this economic disaster caused by bankers is. They have just paid themselves £7bn in bonuses – much of it our money – to reward themselves for failure. That's the same sum Osborne took from the benefits of the British poor yesterday, who did nothing to cause this crash. And he has the chutzpah to brag about "fairness."
Britain just became a colder and crueller country. And for what? To pantingly follow a disproven ideology over a cliff. On the eve of the general election, Cameron told us: "There'll be no cuts to frontline services," "we're not talking about swingeing cuts," and "all cuts will be fair". Is it possible to call him anything but a liar and an ideologue today?
You can enjoy a long rest, Baroness Thatcher – your successors have embarked on a mephedrone-charged imitation that exceeds your most fantastical dreams.

Wednesday 20 October 2010

English football should have heeded Lord Triesman's debt warning

Lord Triesman
The shredding of Liverpool's dignity and Manchester United's sense of looming crisis both arrived almost exactly two years since Lord Triesman, the now-deposed Football Association chairman, delivered his famously rejected warning about high levels of debt in English football.
In October 2008, the Premier League's chief executive Richard Scudamore dismissed the analysis as naive and ill-informed. The debts of the clubs in the world's richest and most popular league were sustainable, Scudamore said, because they added up to the same, around £2.5bn, as their overall income. "Debt to a degree is healthy," Scudamore said. "What is important is that the level of indebtedness has got to be in proportion to your income."
Given the dragging of Liverpool through courts in London and in Dallas before last Friday's takeover by John W Henry II – who paid Tom Hicks's and George Gillett's £200m "acquisition debt" back to the Royal Bank of Scotland, the £769m debts loaded on to Manchester United by the Glazer family's takeover, last season's insolvent wreckage at Portsmouth and the 2009 bankruptcy of West Ham's then owner and former Icelandic "billionaire" Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson, it is instructive to revisit Triesman's analysis.
"There is one certain fact about debt," he said. "It has to be repaid [which mainly it is not] or re-financed. The debt mountains are owned, and therefore the clubs are owned, by either financial institutions some of which are in terrible health, or very rich owners who are not bound to stay, or not very rich owners who are also not bound to stay. As we all know today and far too painfully, finance institutions have finally become highly risk aware … I tell you, I think this poses very tangible dangers."
Calling on the professional game to work with the FA and introduce regulations to protect the game financially, Triesman said the leagues and FA should be: "Partners in a spirit of common purpose."
What happened instead was the vilification of Triesman, which continued until he was ultimately forced to resign after the Mail on Sunday reproduced extracts of a taped private conversation Triesman had with a friend, Melissa Jacobs.
The Premier League said Triesman had made his speech without warning or consultation, which was his most grievous offence. Triesman said he had consistently tried to raise financial issues since early August 2008, and to begin a joint approach, but the Premier League told him it was none of the FA's business and it would regulate its own financial affairs.
In the aftermath, Triesman was characterised as a dolt who did not understand finance, who could not read a balance sheet. In fact the then FA chairman was, and still is, a visiting professor of economics at Cambridge University, had been a government spokesman in the House of Lords for the Department of Trade and Industry, and had conducted his own investments successfully since the 70s. He may have underestimated the lethal nature of English football's power politics, but he could read a balance sheet. He did have a clue that there was a global economic meltdown coming and the top clubs were more vulnerable than they were prepared to believe.
Six days later, 13 October 2008, with the football media backlash against Triesman gaining momentum, the government announced it was injecting £20bn and taking a 58% stake in Royal Bank of Scotland. Alistair Darling, the chancellor at the time, revealed later that a senior RBS executive had called him and said the bank was two hours from collapse. That experience, Darling said, made him realise: "Even something that looks extremely strong and secure can be extremely fragile."
RBS had made many graver misjudgments than lending Hicks and Gillett the £185m to buy Liverpool in February 2007, repayable in 12 months. But that loan, to fund the needless takeover of a healthy sporting institution 115 years old and so loyally supported, encapsulates something of the banks' irresponsibility, as well as the destructiveness of the leveraged buy-out.
Liverpool's crisis this month was precipitated by RBS, now 84% owned by the taxpaying public, deciding it wanted its £200m back, as Triesman warned banks would. The club's chairman, Martin Broughton, beamed last Friday that Henry's paying of Hicks's and Gillett's "leverage" will transform Liverpool financially, because the club is suddenly almost debt free and not paying £30m interest a year. In effect, a new US owner, who may be well intentioned – not in it to make money for himself, as he claimed at the weekend – but who knows nothing of football, now owns Liverpool because he has put them back to where they should have been had the former chairman David Moores never pocketed £90m of Hicks's and Gillett's borrowed money by selling the club to them.
Throughout the determined campaign which Liverpool supporters ran against the pair, they were stunned by the silence from the Premier League and FA. "The authorities were nowhere," laments James McKenna of the Spirit of Shankly fans' group. "The frightening thing is: this can happen again. There are still no rules to stop somebody borrowing money to buy a club, then making the club pay those borrowings."
The Premier League can point to new rules introduced since Scudamore responded to Triesman by claiming clubs were managing their debts "responsibly". Clubs must now show they can pay their way for a full season, and new owners like Henry must show the league their business plans and source of funds. Most Premier League clubs, besides United, are financially supported by owners, not drained by them, and Uefa's financial fair-play rules, beginning next season, are designed to ensure they live within their means.
"We have taken financial regulation and governance to a place few would have imagined possible even a few years back," a Premier League spokesman said. "The regulations, which the clubs have bought into and willingly submit to, create a framework that encourages responsible and sustainable financial management."
However, there are still no rules to prohibit leveraged buyouts, and nobody in football will say a word about it, even as Broughton was punching the air because Liverpool were liberated from theirs. Manchester United have paid £487m bank interest, charges and fees – around the cost of building the 2012 Olympic stadium – to service the Glazers' 2005 takeover. Despite that, the total owed has grown to that eye-watering £769m.
When United released their accounts for 2009-10, amid the assurances that the debts are not hampering investment – whatever Wayne Rooney's reported grumbles – a telling detail got a little lost. It was that £41m, much more than United spent on players, went out on an interest-rate hedging arrangement. It had to be repaid in full, in cash, when the Glazers refinanced and borrowed £500m via a bond in January.
Throughout all this, from the FA, and its acting chairman Roger Burden, there has been not a peep. Triesman's experience had not led to an emboldened FA. Instead, seeing the fury which broke over him afterwards, the lesson has been that no good will come of warning about "very tangible dangers", and that the financial damage visited on England's greatest clubs is not, after all, any of the governing body's business.
David Conn @'The Guardian'

Andrew Vachss: Fighting Bullies One Book at a Time

Bestselling author Andrew Vachss wonders what the devotees of his inarguably adult hard-boiled crime fiction will think of his new book, Heart Transplant—created in partnership with illustrator Frank Caruso—for which he has taken his detective fiction and reconfigured it for a younger audience. Somewhere between graphic novel and picture book, Heart Transplant is aimed at the victims of bullies with the intent of helping the victims and their parents, family and friends deal with the situation effectively. The book will be published by Dark Horse this week.
“I think it’s certainly going to be a stone shock to people who are used to reading my books,” Vachss said. “Frank would tell me, considering the audience this book is aimed at, you’ve got to lose some of the language. I know that’s the way you write, he said, and I know that your books are adult only, but this isn’t. I said okay and went through and got it balanced out better.”
 Heart Transplant is both a meditation on cultural views about bullies and the story of Sean, a kid whose tragic life takes a turn when he is taken in by a tough old guy named Pop following the murder of his mother.“All the ingredients are there for a bad, bad ending for everybody. A happy ending, I don’t know— but the correct ending, I’m absolutely sure of,” Vachss said.

For Heart Transplant Vachss reconfigured the typical paths in crime fiction, fashioning characters who choose different forks in the similar roads offered in detective novels. Wrong turns are made part of the past and characters like Pop and Sean move forward with the understanding that life is a series of choices. It’s not just Sean who gets a second chance, but his benefactor as well, and both as a result of their choices...
Continue reading

Warpaint - The Fool (Stream)

    

Back To Mono (with Uncle Bob!)


U.S. Shocked: Andorra Not In Africa

Tuesday 19 October 2010

Anti-Piracy Company Pirates Queen-Issued Coat of Arms

This year has seen an explosion of companies all trying to cash in on the ‘turn piracy into profit’ mantra. These companies, many of them involving lawyers, are copying other people’s work like crazy – they’re even copying from each other. Today we bring news that one of these companies has taken a Coat of Arms issued by Elizabeth I in 1600, modified it, and used it for their own commercial purposes.
By day they spout their anti-filesharing rhetoric to the world in their inimitable corporate legalese. By night they’re spending the ill-gotten booty generated from their schemes and, surprise, surprise – infringing other people’s copyrights like top-rate hypocrites. There have been so many ‘indiscretions’ in recent times it’s hard to keep up, so please excuse us if we accidentally leave a couple of dozen out.
Earlier, ACS:Law happily copied other people’s news reports and posted those on their site as their own material, but were found out and quickly took the content down. But later the infringer became the victim when it was revealed through the leaked emails from ACS:Law that lawyers Tilly, Bailey & Irvine were threatened by ACS boss Andrew Crossley when TBI ‘pirated’ some of his legal documents and used them to screw money out of alleged file-sharers.
Over the pond in the States, the makers of The Hurt Locker are in partnership with the U.S. Copyright Group (USCG) in order to get yet more worry money from file-sharers. Considering their position, them infringing on other people’s rights would look very bad. And it did when they were caught copying a competitors website. Furthermore, USCG are now being sued by rival Media Copyright Group over a trademark issue.
A trademarks issue you say? Read on…
Earlier this week, following a tip from reader Mr Piracy Reporter, Techdirt reported that another new operation called the Copyright Defense Agency had created a very similar website to the one owned by the Copyright Enforcement Agency – the same company that USCG were accused of copying earlier. Please try to keep up…
However, while the sites do indeed look very similar, with their tech-styled graphics on the right and their official looking emblems on the left, it seems that the Copyright Defense Agency have been very naughty. Very naughty indeed. Here is their frontpage:
CDA Logo
Copyright Defense Agency

While the logo above does indeed look proud and regal, that hardly comes as a surprise when one discovers it was actually issued by Queen Elizabeth I. In the year 1600. However, since the Copyright Defense Agency (CDA) weren’t threatening file-sharers more than 400 years ago, they couldn’t have been the lucky recipients.
It turns out that Queen Elizabeth I gave this Coat of Arms to the famous East India Company which was set up by the English to trade with India. The original sketch can be seen below (image credit).
east
East India Company Coat of Arms
“The East India Company was granted a Coat of Arms under the direct instructions from Queen Elizabeth I to William Camden alias Clarencieux, Garter Principal of the King of Arms,” explains the company website.
The company exists in new form today as a luxury brand, so when one begins to understand a little about the history its perhaps no surprise that they currently use a different logo. Nevertheless, the company is very clear about who owns the emblem.
“Today the coat of arms is a trademark of The East India Company,” they explain.
The Coat of Arms as displayed on the CDA site is, however, very slightly modified. The text as ordered by Queen Elizabeth I has been erased from the bottom scrolls.
It did say Deus Indicat. Deo Ducente Nil Nocet. (God is our leader. When God leads, nothing can harm.)
Its probably best for CDA to erase the rest of the logo now, and buy one of their own. Then they should stop intimidating file-sharers for doing just the same but for non-commercial purposes. They can’t take the moral high-ground with moves like this – if they ever had it.

Attack on Chechen parliament in Grozny leaves six dead

Seconded!

Chas Licciardello ChasLicc Hey Mythbusters! While Obama's there, do you think you could bust that whole "Socialist, Kenyan, Muslim Antichrist" thing? Cheers.

Pentagon cautions news media on WikiLeaks documents

Pakistan intelligence services 'aided Mumbai terror attacks'

Smoke and flames pour from the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai during the November 2008 attacks. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Pakistan's powerful intelligence services were heavily involved in preparations for the Mumbai terrorist attacks of November 2008, according to classified Indian government documents obtained by the Guardian.
A 109-page report into the interrogation of key suspect David Headley, a Pakistani-American militant arrested last year and detained in the US, makes detailed claims of ISI support for the bombings.
Under questioning, Headley described dozens of meetings between officers of the main Pakistani military intelligence service, the ISI, and senior militants from the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group responsible for the Mumbai attacks.
He claims a key motivation for the ISI in aiding the attacks was to bolster militant organisations with strong links to the Pakistani state and security establishment who were being marginalised by more extreme radical groups.
Headley, who undertook surveillance of the targets in Mumbai for the operation, claims that at least two of his missions were partly paid for by the ISI and that he regularly reported to the spy agency. However, the documents suggest that supervision of the militants by the ISI was often chaotic and that the most senior officers of the agency may have been unaware at least of the scale and ambition of the operation before it was launched.
More than 160 people were killed by militants from LeT who arrived by sea to attack luxury hotels, a Jewish centre, a café, a hospital and the main railway station in Mumbai, the Indian commercial capital. Casualties included citizens from 25 countries, including four Americans killed and seven Britons injured. The attacks dominated media for days and badly damaged already poor Indian-Pakistan relations.
European and American security services now fear that LeT, which has thousands of militants, runs dozens of training camps and has extensive logistic networks overseas, is moving from what has been a largely regional agenda – focused on the disputed Himalayan former princely state of Kashmir – to a global agenda involving strikes against the west or western interests. The documents suggest the fierce internal argument within the organisation over its strategic direction is being won by hardliners.
Headley, interviewed over 34 hours by Indian investigators in America in June, described how "a debate had begun among the terrorist outfits" and "a clash of ideology" leading to "splits".
"The aggression and commitment to jihad shown by several splinter groups in Afghanistan influenced many committed fighters to leave [LeT]," Headley said. "I understand this compelled the LeT to consider a spectacular terrorist strike in India."
Headley, who changed his name from Daood Gilani, told the investigators that the ISI hoped the Mumbai attack would slow or stop growing "integration" between groups active in Kashmir, with whom the agency had maintained a long relationship, and "Taliban-based outfits" in Pakistan and Afghanistan which were a threat to the Pakistani state.
"The ISI … had no ambiguity in understanding the necessity to strike India," Headley is reported to have said. The aim of the agency was "controlling further split in the Kashmir-based outfits, providing them a sense of achievement and shifting … the theatre of violence from the domestic soil of Pakistan to India."
Headley describes meeting once with a "Colonel Kamran" from the military intelligence service and having a series of meetings with a "Major Iqbal" and a "Major Sameer Ali". A fellow conspirator was handled by a Colonel Shah, he claims. Headley also alleges that he was given $25,000 by his ISI handler to finance one of eight surveillance missions in India.
However, Headley describes the ISI director general, Lt General Shuja Pasha, visiting a key senior militant from LeT in prison after the attacks in a bid "to understand" the operation, implying that, as many western security agencies suspect, the top ranks of the agency were unaware of at least the scale of the planned strike.
The Pakistani government has repeatedly denied any involvement of any security official in the Mumbai attacks. Last night, an ISI spokesman told the Guardian the accusations of the agency's involvement in the Mumbai attacks were "baseless".
LeT was banned in Pakistan in 2002. Jamat-ud Dawa, the social welfare wing of LeT, has been blacklisted in the wake of the Mumbai attacks although it continues to function.
The revelations could prove embarrassing to the US government as well as to the Pakistanis. Reports in American newspapers over the weekend claimed that Headley's wife had tried to alert American authorities to her husband's activities but had been ignored.
Jason Burke @'The Guardian'

'Searching For The Young Soul Rebels' (Review)

Dexys Midnight Runners
Time – and its faithful attendant, nostalgia – tends to work on music the way a pumice stone works on rough skin, eventually smoothing all that once seemed compellingly odd and idiosyncratic into something softer and more approachable.
Few records retain the ability to be truly confrontational a full 30 years after first release, but Dexys Midnight Runners’ debut, which hit shops in July 1980, still bristles with an awkward and inimitable intensity. From the moment the opening blare of “Burn It Down” emerges from a jumble of radio static, the impact of this record remains remarkably undimmed by age.
It’s easy to forget how incongruous it was in the post-Pistols musical landscape for a band to immerse themselves so utterly in ’60s soul. Dexys’ refusal to be second-rate punks, instead acting like a law unto themselves, was emblematic of their entire ethos. A 10-deep firm of misfits formed in Birmingham in the image of their gang leader, Kevin Rowland, they seethed with outsider energy and a deep hostility, making the lyric to “I’m Just Looking”, one of the highlights, sound like a manifesto: “Don’t come any closer”.
Rowland’s lyrics on Searching For The Young Soul Rebels are a mixture of punchy bravado, deep disgust and a rather heroic flaunting of his insecurities, sobbed rather than sung. The music – played by a sprawling revue centred around guitarist Kevin Archer, trombonist ‘Big’ Jim Paterson, keyboardist Mick Talbot and bassist Pete Williams – locates a whole other vibe: buzzing on the energy and intensity of Motown and Stax, though picking up precious little of the sex. It’s occasionally a little stiff, but it’s always rousing.
Partly it’s this tension between the soulful uplift of the music and Rowland’s naked striving that keeps the album sounding so alive. “Thankfully Not Living In Yorkshire It Doesn’t Apply” at first seems a light hearted romp – Rowland’s quick-fire falsetto, the comical stabs of organ – until you tune into the sentiment being expressed. Likewise, “Tell Me When My Light Turns Green”, with its talk of being “manic depressive” and “spat on and shat on”, is raw discontent set to bottled exhilaration, with Rowland straining away like a greyhound in the traps. And the irresistibly speedy cover of Chuck Wood’s “Seven Days Too Long”, a doffed cap to their Northern Soul influences, twists heartache into a sweet thrill.
But it’s not all about attitude, posture and passion. These are truly great songs. “Geno” may now be woven into the musical fabric of Britain, but its message about outpunching your youthful heroes still resonates quite powerfully . The two ballads – “I Couldn’t Help It If I Tried” (where Rowland channels Van Morrison’s babbling, inarticulate speech of the heart) and “I’m Just Looking” – form not only the emotional spine of the record, but also an umbilical link to “Until I Believe To My Soul” and “Liars A To E”, the centrepieces on 1982’s Too-Rye-Ay. “Keep It” and the closing “There There, My Dear”, meanwhile, are fiery and oddly euphoric. Only “Love Part One” hasn’t worn well, with Rowland, like a Brummie Ginsberg, intoning over free-form saxophone. He would only master the spoken word form – and reveal his sense of humour – on Dexys’ brilliant and fatally ambitious 1985 swan song, Don’t Stand Me Down.
This new edition of Searching For The Young Soul Rebels comes with a second disc which features 21 additional tracks: a- and b-sides, BBC sessions with John Peel and ‘Kid’ Jensen, and previously unreleased demos from EMI’s Manchester Square studio, including a tilt at Sam and Dave’s “Hold On I’m Comin’”. Much of it has been aired before, and inevitably there is repetition, but it contains some terrific performances from a band firing at full power, however briefly.
This blazing incarnation of Dexys barely survived the album’s release before fracturing under the eccentricities of their leader, who subsequently assembled new gangs for the following Too-Rye-Ay and Don’t Stand Me Down before the whole thing fell apart. But ultimately, the myth-making around Kevin Rowland tends to obscure the fact that he’s been responsible for some truly soul-scorching music, much of it featuring on this record. At 30 years of age, Searching For The Young Soul Rebels continues to burn.
Graeme Thomson @'Uncut'
 
Well I will be first in line for this reissue.
I remember when I first bought this album in Glasgow's Virgin Records. 
I also picked up the debut albums by The Beat and The Teardrop Explodes at the same time.
That was back in the days when 'classic' pop music was being made my friends...

Interactive fun with Flying Lotus


Taken from Pattern+Grid World EP
Download all 3D character files free at beeple-crap.com/​resources.php
Upload your own works using them at vimeo.com/​groups/​flyinglotus
Buy P+GW at Bleep: bleep.com

Petite Mort



Brian Eno from 'Small Craft On A Milk Sea'


    Horse

John Lennon @ 70

What are you waiting for?

Afghanistan

Collateral Damage
(Thanx Amos Poe!)

Wire - Two Minutes (from Red, Barked Tree)



WIRE
“Red Barked Tree”
New album released January 10th 2011
At a time when back catalogue outsells fresh creativity and newcomers achieve fame by adding a lick of paint to their parents’ record collections, it’s unusual to find a band who, despite plying their trade for decades, are willing and able to make new work that’s as vital and relevant as their own illustrious past recordings. Wire are such a band, and with Red Barked Tree they just might have succeeded in making a statement that will sound as strong in 30 years as their celebrated historical oeuvre does today.
Red Barked Tree rekindles a lyricism sometimes absent from Wire’s previous work and reconnects with the live energy of performance, harnessed and channelled from extensive touring over the past few years.
Red Barked Tree was conceived, written and recorded mostly during 2010 by the pared-down line-up of Colin Newman, Graham Lewis and Robert Grey -- with no guests. Ranging from the hymnal “Adapt” to the barking sledgehammer art-punk of “Two Minutes,” the album encompasses the full palette of style and nuance that has always endeared Wire to pastel-tinged pop aficionados and bleeding-edge avant-rockers alike.
Whatever Wire make is Wire music: this is the band’s enigmatic guiding axiom. While Wire remain agnostic about the nature and identity of their aesthetic essence, it’s always been instantly recognisable, manifesting itself throughout their heterogeneous work. Perhaps this enigma will be revealed when we find the “Red Barked Trees”....
Tracklisting:
1. Please Take
2. Now Was
3. Adapt
4. Two Minutes
5. Clay
6. Bad Worn Thing
7. Moreover
8. A Flat Tent
9. Smash
10. Down To This
11. Red Barked Trees