Wednesday 30 March 2011

Young Ari

Bob Clearmountain: Wizard of the Rock 'n' Roll Mix

One Shot Not : Susheela Raman


Raise Up
Daga Daga
Ennapane

Tuesday 29 March 2011

Mary Anne Hobbs - Return to Radio


see HERE

Eddie Vedder - Longing to Belong


 
From forthcoming album "Ukulele Songs" to be released May 27th

'I cried when I saw them marching'


The Hungarian far right looks set to roll out a campaign of Roma intimidation after meeting little resistance to its vigilante "law and order" mission in Gyongyospata, a Hungarian village of 2,800 people 80km north-east of Budapest.
For A Better Future, a paramilitary organisation deriving its name from a Nazi youth movement slogan, entered the village at the start of the month. It conducted foot and car patrols, followed Roma around and stopped them from entering shops.
On March 10, the intimidation reached its peak when 1,000 black-uniformed neo-Nazis marched through the village, some reportedly armed with dogs, whips and chains.
Many Roma were afraid to leave their homes or take their children to school. The local mayor, Laszlo Tabi, who is not officially allied to a political party, allegedly offered his seal of approval, while the police sat on their hands.
"I cried when I saw them marching," says Janos Farkas, the spokesman for the village's 450-strong Roma community which centres around a dirt road in a shallow valley at the edge of the village. Many of the dilapidated homes do not have mains water and few of their occupants jobs.
"I can't see how this could happen in a democratic country? The police are now present, but why did they let it go on for three weeks?" asks Farkas.
Nothing has been done to stop the vigilantes from restarting their activities here or to prevent them springing up elsewhere.
A national 'example'
"This looks like a local conflict, but it is a national one," says Kristof Szombati of Politics Can Be Different, a liberal green party. On this, if nothing else, the far right agrees with him.
Gyongyospata provides an "example for future situations" says Gabor Vona, the leader of the extreme-right Jobbik party, which is behind the uniformed intervention, at a press conference in the village council chamber. His party hopes to use the vigilante campaign to mark the first anniversary of its entry into parliament, with 17 per cent of the vote, next month....
 Continue reading
Phil Cain @'Al Jazeera'

Peasant Seeds: Dignity, Culture and Life. Farmers in Resistance to Defend their Right to Peasant Seeds

Farmers throughout the world are the victims of a war for control over seeds. Our agricultural systems are threatened by industries that seek to control our seeds by all available means. The outcome of this war will determine the future of humanity, as all of us depend on seeds for our daily food.
One actor in this war is the seed industry that uses genetic engineering, hybrid technologies and agrochemicals. Its aim is the ownership of seeds as a source of increased profits. They do this by forcing farmers to consume its seeds and become dependent on them. The other actor is peasants and family farmers who preserve and reproduce seeds within living, local, peasant and indigenous seed systems, seeds that are the heritage of our peoples, cared for and reproduced by men and women peasants. They are a treasure that we farmers generously place at the service of humanity.
Industry has invented many ways of stealing our seeds in order to manipulate them, mark them with property titles, and thereby force us, the farming peoples of the world, to buy new seeds from them every year, instead of saving and selecting them from our harvest to plant the following year. The industry’s methods include genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and hybrid seeds, which cannot be reproduced by farmers, as well as industrial property over seeds, including patents and plant variety certificates, all of which are imposed through international treaties and national laws. These are but different forms of theft, as all industrial seeds are the product of thousands of years of selection and breeding by our peoples. It is thanks to us, peasants and farmers, that humanity has at hand the great diversity of crops that, together with animal breeding, feeds the world today.
In their drive to build monopolies and steal our natural wealth, corporations and the governments who serve them place at risk all of humanity’s food and agriculture. A handful of genetically uniform varieties replace thousands of local varieties, eroding the genetic diversity that sustains our food system. Faced with climate change, diversity is a strength, and uniformity a weakness. Commercial seeds drastically reduce the capacity of humanity to face and adapt to climate change. This is why we maintain that peasant agriculture and its peasant seeds contribute to the cooling of the planet.
Our communities know that hybrid and genetically modified seeds require enormous quantities of pesticides, chemical fertilizers and water, driving up production costs and damaging the environment. Such seeds are also more susceptible to droughts, plant diseases and pest attacks, and have already caused hundreds of thousands of cases of crop failures and have left devastated household economies in their wake. The industry has bred seeds that cannot be cultivated without harmful chemicals. They have also been bred to be harvested using large machinery and are kept alive artificially to withstand transport. But the industry has ignored a very important aspect of this breeding: our health. The result is industrial seeds that grow fast have lost nutritional value and are full of chemicals. They cause numerous allergies and chronic illnesses, and contaminate the soil, water and air that we breathe.
In contrast, peasant systems for rediscovering, re-valuing, conserving and exchanging seeds, together with local adaptation due to the local selection and reproduction in farmers’ fields, maintain and increase the genetic biodiversity that underlies our world food systems and gives us the required capacity and flexibility to address diverse environments, a changing climate and hunger in the world....
 Continue reading

Until The End Of The World

BBC footage identifies (alleged) police agent crossing line during cuts protest


Footage shot by the BBC inadvertently catches an unidentified man walking up to police constables during a fracas, showing his identification, and quickly walking off beyond police lines.
The man is unlikely to be a journalist since he’s dressed in gear that covers his face and head, while carrying nothing that looks like a notebook or a camera.
The video was shot by a BBC News helicopter during coverage of the protests away from the main TUC march on Saturday.
In January this year the Met Police admitted that it had posted covert officers at the G20 protests last year, despite initially saying it had not.
(above video edited with Political Scrapbook. Found via @aaronjohnpeters)
The full video shot by the BBC is here (the necessary segment is 5m50s in).
Sunny Hundal @'Lib Con'

New Wilco song?

Jonny Faith - Beats From Mars Mix

Tracklist:
01. Mars Intro
02. Meteor Shower (Ital Tek Remix) - Jonny Faith
03. Skulltaste - Mux Mool
04. Greatest Silence - Lorn
05. 1685 Bach - Nosaj Thing
06. Kiara - Bonobo
07. Neon Beams - Take
08. You and I Both Know - Alex B
09. Stay Blazed - Darkhouse Family
10. Full Moon - Jonny Faith
11. Cant Fathom This (Om Unit RMX) - Freddy Todd
12. I Miss Your Brains - Take
13. Soul Stew - Leonard Dstroy
14. Are You The One - Bullion
15. You - Gold Panda
16. Mahjongg - Charles Trees
17. OK Luv (Eprom rmx) - Starkey
18. Battlestar Terror - Harmonic 313 Vs Demolition Man
19. Blue Sky on Mars - Jonny Faith 
(Thanx Audiozobe!)

Mark Kennedy: Confessions of an undercover cop


After seven years spent living as an environmental activist, Mark Stone was revealed to be policeman Mark Kennedy. He talks to Simon Hattenstone about life on the outside, with no job, no friends and no idea who he really is.

Read it HERE

Monday 28 March 2011

Zoooom: The Gift Maker

Radioheads 'The Universal Sigh' Newspaper

Radiohead are releasing an exclusive newspaper entitled The Universal Sigh, worldwide today. The newspaper release coincides with the release of The King of Limbs, on CD and vinyl in stores and on iTunes today. Due to time differences New Zealand is the first place in the world to get the chance to see what all the fuss is about. GET IT HERE [PDF format] @ripitup.co.nz

UPDATE:
D/load NO longer available but you can see it HERE
along with photos from Melbourne yesterday and video of Thom himself handing the paper out at Rough Trade in London.
Reuters Top News
FLASH: Qatar recognises rebel Libyan national council as sole, legitimate representative of Libyan people - Al Jazeera

Life at a needle exchange

Politics of misogyny, or misogyny of politics … you decide

Deadmau5 @ Ultra Music Festival - Miami - USA 26-03-2011

Via
Winner of Beatport's artist of the year award!

Joe Bageant RIP


Poet, prophet and redneck revolutionary: Joe Bageant R.I.P. 

Fracking the Wind River Country


Jeff and Rhonda Locker’s water changed abruptly one day in the mid-1990s while Rhonda was doing the laundry. A Denver-based gas company was working over an old well in back of their house, when the wash water turned black. “It happened just like that,” Jeff Locker says. “I stopped him and asked him what he did to our water, and of course he didn’t do anything to our water… It’s been bad ever since.”
Donna Meeks’ well water was so good, she used to haul it to town for the school office coffee pot. Neither she nor her husband Louis noticed anything wrong until her co-workers stopped drinking the coffee; it was 2004, and a Canadian company, EnCana, had just drilled a new well about 500 feet from the Meeks home. Some visiting friends later said they noticed the water tasted and smelled like gas, but didn’t want to be rude by saying anything about it.
John and Cathy Fenton had no reason to suspect there was anything wrong with their water—it tasted fine. But just to be neighborly, they went along with the Lockers, the Meeks, and other Pavillion-area residents when the Environmental Protection Agency came in 2009 for an initial round of testing. That’s when they found out that their family had been drinking water laced with methane. Follow-up tests a year later found a whole soup’s worth of semi-volatile organic compounds in the family’s stock well.
There’s something karmic about the possibility that Pavillion, Wyoming, might be the first community to prove its water damaged by natural gas production. While water literally is life everywhere in the arid West, here it’s the epicenter for deep social and political divisions.
Pavillion sits exposed to the wind and weather on the rolling high plains of the Wind River Valley’s northern flank. The town boasts two bars, two restaurants, one grocery, and serves as a social center for the community of farms and ranches that populate the Midvale irrigation district. It’s the schools—practically brand new—that bring people together here, says Jeff Locker, who sits on the school board. “Even retired people come to the ball games,” he says. By ball, Locker means basketball because this is a reservation town...
 Continue reading
Andrea Peacock @'Counterpunch'

Henry Rollins on water for Drop in the Bucket




And Now, A Positive Henry Rollins Story

Islamist Group Is Rising Force in a New Egypt

PSA

The Associated Press
BREAKING: Magnitude 6.5 earthquake rattles eastern Japan again; tsunami alert issued

Breastfeeding Women Viewed as Less Competent

A study emerged out of Oxford University last week suggesting babies who are breastfed end up doing better in school. Yet despite such well-documented benefits for both mother and child, the percentage of American breastfeeding women remains “stagnant and low,” according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Why are only one-third of American mothers exclusively breastfeeding at three months, and only 43 percent breastfeeding at all at six months? Perhaps because they’ve gotten a sense of how harshly they are being judged.
Research just published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (“Spoiled Milk: An Experimental Examination of Bias Against Mothers Who Breastfeed”) reports mothers who breastfeed are widely viewed as less competent than otherwise identical females. This disturbing finding was obtained in three separate studies, one of which also found breastfeeding is a handicap for women hoping to be hired for a job.
“Importantly, we did not find evidence that gender of the participant influenced perceptions of the breastfeeding mother,” notes the research team led by Montana State University psychologist Jessi L. Smith. Women, it seems, are just as likely as men to hold this bias.
In one experiment, 30 students told they were engaging in an “impression formation study” were given biographical information on actress Brooke Shields, including the fact she had just written a book about motherhood. Half were told the volume included information on her “experiences with breastfeeding, bathing and overall care of a newborn;” for the other half, the word “bottle-feeding” was exchanged for “breastfeeding.”....
 Continue reading
Tom Jacobs @'truth-out'

Bligh bowled over by 'caring' Foo Fighters

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh saw the softer side of Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl when she dropped in to thank the US rock band for Sunday night's flood benefit concert at Brisbane's Riverstage.
Ms Bligh made a fleeting visit backstage for a meet-and-greet with the Foo Fighters about half an hour before they took the stage before some 10,000 fans at the alcohol-free event.
She exchanged some light-hearted banter, posed for photos with the Foo Fighters and music mogul Michael Gudinski and then explained the complications and frustrations for Queenslanders confronted with flood insurance.
The Premier said she was pleasantly surprised by the band's inquiries about the problems faced by those who were affected by the floods.
"He (Dave Grohl) said 'this is what I know how to do. I don't know how to fix people's roofs, but I know how to make music and make money'," she said.
"They wanted to speak about how many people were out of their homes... they are genuinely interested. They were wanting to help.
"Foo Fighters care about people who need help."
All profits from the concert, which was the only Australian benefit show the Foo Fighters slotted on their tour to promote their forthcoming album Wasting Light, will go to the Premier's Disaster Relief Fund.
Ms Bligh was unable to stay and soak up the atmosphere of the two-and-half-hour concert because of early morning cabinet duties.
"They are an iconic international rock band and them coming here to raise money for us is a gift," Ms Bligh said.
"They understand I have some big responsibilities and they were fine.
"They sold out in 15 minutes and they have some big young fans here, they don't need an old lady like me rocking in the front row."
The Premier's Disaster Relief Fund has raised more than $250 million and Ms Bligh has no intention to set a cut-off date for donations.
"In the past we've let them go on and let people donate for as long as they like," Ms Bligh said.
"I'm happy to take donations for as long as people want to make them."
@'ABC'

Wisconsin Church Members Charged With Abusing Infants

Swinging!

Eleanoora Rosenholm - Valo Kaasumeren Hämärässä

Gingrich: I’m not a hypocrite

German Greens hail state victory in vote overshadowed by Fukushima

Winfried Kretschmann
Winfried Kretschmann is likely to become the Green party's first regional 'minister president' after exit polls suggested his party polled most votes in the Baden-Wuerttemberg state elections. Photograph: Uli Deck/AFP/Getty Images
The Green party has taken power from Angela Merkel's conservatives in one of Germany's richest states, preliminary results from the Baden-Württemberg elections show.
The chancellor's Christian Democratic Union party, or CDU, had ruled the region's state legislature for almost 58 years, but found itself on the wrong side of the nuclear debate following Fukushima. Even before the Japanese earthquake, the party was unpopular locally for sanctioning a multibillion euro project to build a railway station in Stuttgart.
Support for the CDU slumped from 44.2% in the 2006 state election to 39%, according to official results.
The state parliament's new leader would be Winfried Kretschmann, 62, a spiky-haired former science teacher. He is likely to become the Green party's first regional "minister president" after his party gained 25% of the vote; enough, when combined with the 23.1% for the centre-left Social Democratic party, to form a coalition. Minister presidents are powerful on a national as well as a regional level, because they have a vote in Germany's upper house, the Bundesrat, and can veto legislation.
It would mark a historic win for the minority party, which polled 11.7% in Baden-Württemberg in 2006. Even when the Greens were in government in a coalition with Gerhard Schröder's Social Democrats between 1998 and 2005, and had Joschka Fischer as foreign minister, the party never managed to win a regional "Landtag" election.
"We have written history," said Claudia Roth, joint leader of the Green party, speaking in Berlin after polls closed. Dressed head-to-toe in green, including glittery emerald ballet pumps, she said the result would have repercussions far beyond the borders of Baden-Württemberg. It was, she said, "a resounding slap in the face" for Merkel's coalition.
Commentators have suggested that a dramatic CDU defeat makes Merkel's position untenable. It would be "the beginning of the end" for her, wrote one on Spiegel Online on Friday. Others suggest the leader known as Iron Angie will plough on until the general election in 2013.
Also voting on Sunday was Rhineland-Palatinate state, where an ARD exit poll saw the Social Democrats retain power but only by agreeing to a coalition government with the Greens. The SPD fell 10 percentage points to 35.5%, while the Greens appeared to have more than trebled their vote, with 17%, according to the exit poll, and will send representatives to that regional parliament for the first time. The Christian Democrats are seen gaining 1.2% to 34%.
But this did little to numb the pain in Baden-Württemberg; though the CDU did win more votes than any other single party, its preferred coalition partner, the pro-business Free Democratic party, performed abysmally. The FDP were at 5.3%, down from 10.7% in 2006. In Rheinland-Pfalz, the FDP failed to get the 5% minimum necessary to gain any seats in the state parliament.
This poor showing poses difficult questions for the FDP's leader, the unpopular foreign minister Guido Westerwelle. It could also call into question the national CDU-FDP coalition in power since autumn 2009. Within half an hour of the first exit poll, Daniel Bahr, an FDP politician from Nordrhein-Westfalen, told ARD his party needed to consider a "change of personnel".
The Green vote was helped by the argument in Germany over its 17 nuclear power plants, heightened by the Fukushima disaster. In the aftermath, Merkel performed an 180-degree policy change by announcing the closure of seven stations built before 1980. She also said she was committed to speeding up total withdrawal from nuclear power.
This was six months after she had ignored public opinion by extending the life of the 17 plants by an average 12 years; in this, one of her most vociferous supporters was Baden-Württemberg's minister president, Stefan Mappus; he paid the price for his loyalty.
Helen Pidd @'The Guardian'

As our German correspondent HerrB says:
"Ben Ali, Mubarak, Gadaffi, Mappus... HA!!!
Victory ceremonies like in Kairo over here tonight!!!"
Prost my friend!

Something wrong with this picture?

Glenn Greenwald: Billionaire self-pity and the Koch brothers

(GB2011)

What really happened in Trafalgar Square?

The Mekons & Kathy Acker - Pussy, King of the Pirates (1996)

  1. "My Name Is O" 0:34
  2. Ange's Song After She Crawled Through London 3:42
  3. "I Want To Tell You About Myself" 0:43
  4. The Song Of The Dogs 3:19
  5. "We're Just Outside London" 2:58
  6. Ostracism's Song For Pussycat 3:40
  7. "Antigone, You See Her" 0:34
  8. Antigone Speaks About Herself 3:50
  9. "Now Let Me Tell You..." 0:32
  10. My Song At Night 3:28
  11. "Since Ange And Me Are Innocent" 0:43
  12. Into The Strange 4:42
  13. Captured By Pirates 4:52
  14. A Prayer For All Sailors 3:03
  15. O 1:52 
  16.   (Right click/save as)
Artwork By - S. Clay Wilson
Banjo [Cumbus] - Blind Lugh
Bass - Sarah Corina
Drums - Steven Goulding
Engineer - Long Jon Gillver of Dubbe Island
Fiddle - Captain "Kidd" Honeyperson
Guitar, Vocals - Jon Langford, Tom The Cabin Boy
Recorded By - Baron Von Trumfio, Bosun Hagler
Vocals - Master Sally Bates
Voice - More-Than-Able Seaman Acker (tracks: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11)
Written by - Kathy Acker, The Mekons

Notes
Recorded September 1995 at Kingsize Studios in Chicago, and July 1995 in Leeds at an unnamed location.
Released concurrently with Kathy Acker's novel of the same title.  
More Acker downloads also available
@'UbuWeb'

Various - Deepgoa - Rumble In The Jungle 001 Mix


Markus Guentner - Dreiglanz
Keinzweiter - From Amsterdam To Mainz (Alexander Jannink)
Jak - Swaph
Lulu Rouge - U
Mick Thammer - Before After (Extended Mix)
Deckard - The Lone Ferry
Kabana - Flux
Dimitar Dodovski - Particle System
Cari Lekebusch - Abomination
Daniele Bazzanti- Clown
Phunklarique & Dejonka - Need To Change (Audiofly x Mix)
Session View - Boundless
Edson Byer - Anarcosfera
Bactee & Tito - 8 Channels
Phooka - Raining
Holger Nilsson - Volver
DML - Arbeitstitel
Santos Resiak - Check My Cumbia  

Big Coal WikiLeaks Emergency in Bangladesh: Does Obama Support Removal of 100,000 Villagers?


When thousands of Bangladeshi take to the streets again on March 28th as part of a decade-long battle to halt a devastating British-owned open-pit coal mine, the world will not only be watching whether Bangladesh’s government will honor a coal ban agreement from 2006 or resort to violence.
In light of disturbing WikiLeaks cables, American and worldwide human rights and environmental organizations will also be questioning why the Obama administration is covertly pushing for Bangladesh to reverse course and acquiesce to an internationally condemned massive open-pit mine that will displace an estimated 100,000-200,000 villagers and ravage desperately needed farm land and water resources.
The short answer, from US Ambassador James Moriarty’s leaked memos: “Asia Energy, the company behind the Phulbari project, has sixty percent US investment. Asia Energy officials told the Ambassador they were cautiously optimistic that the project would win government approval in the coming months.”
Two years ago, an independent review of the coal mine by a British research firm warned:
“Phulbari Coal Project threatens numerous dangers and potential damages, ranging from the degradation of a major agricultural region in Bangladesh to pollution of the world’s largest wetlands. The project’s Summary Environmental Impact Assessment, and its full Environmental and Social Impact Assessment are replete with vague assurances, issuing many promises of future mitigation measures.”
For US-based Cultural Survival and International Accountability Project, the Phulbari coal mine is nothing less than a “humanitarian and ecological disaster.”
Last month, Cultural Survival and International Accountability Project joined with Jatiya Adivasi Parishad, Bangladesh’s National Indigenous Union, to launch an international campaign to stop the open-pit mine and raise awareness of on-going Big Coal human rights and environmental violations in Bangladesh...
 Continue reading
Jeff Biggers @'AlterNet'

King Creosote & Jon Hopkins - Diamond Mine (2011 - Albumstream)

Scottish singer/songwriter Kenny Anderson is King Creosote, who has also been a part-time member of Magnetophone and U.N.P.O.C., and has performed with Adem. He had previously been the vocalist for Skuobhie Dubh Orchestra and Khartoum Heroes. Anderson has released two dozen CD-Rs on his own label, Fence, a collective assembled along with brothers Een (aka Pip Dylan) and Gordon (aka Lone Pigeon). In 2003 Domino pressed the first proper album Kenny and Beth's Musakal Boatrides, followed in 2005 by Rocket D.I.Y. Released in 2006, KC Rules OK included liner notes from famed Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin, and garnered both regional and international acclaim. Bombshell arrived in 2007, followed by Flick the Vs in 2009. The compilation Thrawn -- representing Anderson’s first official stateside release -- was issued in 2011, and Diamond Mine, a collaboration with British ambient artist Jon Hopkins, also arrived that year. (Kenyon Hopkin)

First Watch
John Taylor's Month Away
Bats in the Attic
Running on Fumes
Bubble
Your Own Spell
Your Young Voice

album review by Steve Mcgillivray

ALBUMSTREAM

Sunday 27 March 2011

How could we not?

Via

Racism in Russian football: Zenit fans let side down