Monday, 11 January 2010

Americans, particularly if they are of a certain leftward-leaning, college-educated type, worry about our country’s blunders into other cultures. In some circles, it is easy to make friends with a rousing rant about the McDonald’s near Tiananmen Square, the Nike factory in Malaysia or the latest blowback from our political or military interventions abroad. For all our self-recrimination, however, we may have yet to face one of the most remarkable effects of American-led globalization. We have for many years been busily engaged in a grand project of Americanizing the world’s understanding of mental health and illness. We may indeed be far along in homogenizing the way the world goes mad...

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@'NY Times'

If you can't find the book you want you're probably shopping here...

(Thanx Scurvy!)

Sunday, 10 January 2010

As this is going around the interwebbynethingy...

Hmmmm!
Saw this the other day...

The ONLY way to watch #filmsmadescottish

What Bill Clinton allegedly said about Obama

One of the enduring mysteries of the 2008 campaign was what got Ted Kennedy so mad at Bill Clinton. The former president's entreaties, at some point, backfired, and the explanation has never quite emerged.
I've finally gotten my hands on a copy of Game Change, in which John Heliemann and Mark Halperin report:

[A]s Hillary bungled Caroline, Bill’s handling of Ted was even worse. The day after Iowa, he phoned Kennedy and pressed for an endorsement, making the case for his wife. But Bill then went on, belittling Obama in a manner that deeply offended Kennedy. Recounting the conversation later to a friend, Teddy fumed that Clinton had said, A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.

@'Politico'

And yet another perspective...

This video clearly shows what happened the last moments before the Shonan Maru rammed the Ady Gil causing it to sink. Note how at the start of the clip, Pete asks the person at the helm to stop the ship, and how the Shonan Maru is far behind them.

Bloody hell!

A police sub inspector who died after being attacked by a gang in Tirunelveli district on Thursday allegedly failed to get help from Media (cameraman stood, recording the event ) & two ministers who were passing by in their cavalcade.

Police said R Vetrivel, 44, was a victim of mistaken identity and the assailants were after another police officer. The gang threw crude bombs at Vetrivel, severely injuring his right leg. Vetrivel was then attacked with sickles, suffering deep injuries on his neck and head.
Full story
HERE

James Ellroy and David Peace in conversation

Whatever happened to that Asian punk band?

Alien Kulture in 1980, clockwise from top: Azhar Rana (drums), Huw Jones (guitar), Pervez Bilgrami (vocals) and Ausaf Abbas (bass).

It is 1979. In a cafe in Wimbledon, south London, three young Asian men are deep in conversation. The Conservative victory of a few months earlier has left them dejected; the anti-Nazi demonstrations, the involvement with Rock Against Racism, the rallies against the National Front – none of it prevented the Tories from getting in. This is not a good time to be Asian, and things are, the men fear, about to get much worse. Margaret Thatcher, the new prime minister, has already voiced concerns, in a television interview the previous year, that "people are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture".

The men are frustrated and impatient; protest has not worked, so what is left? Punk, that's what. The friends decide to form a band, an Asian punk band that will talk about their lives and fears as second-generation sons of immigrants. The longer they talk the more exciting the prospect seems; the lyrics and music will come later but right now they need a name. It seems obvious: if Thatcher thinks they are an alien culture, then Alien Kulture is what they will be.

An Asian punk band? Even today the idea seems rather absurd, so how much more strange must it have seemed 30 years ago when Ausaf Abbas, Azhar Rana, Pervez Bilgrami and "token white" Huw Jones decided to form Alien Kulture. Abbas and Rana had been friends since they were both six, living in south London, children of middle-class Pakistani immigrants. By the late 70s, they had wound up studying the same course at the London School of Economics. "I was always political," recalls Abbas. "I was going on demonstrations as a teenager and the arrival of Margaret Thatcher just electrified everything – it gave us even more to rant and rave about."

The Pakistani community in Balham was tightly knit so it was perhaps inevitable that Abbas and Rana would run into Bilgrami, another young Asian who shared their twin loves of politics and punk. "I remember the first time I saw the Sex Pistols on So it Goes," Bilgrami says. "It was 'Anarchy in the UK' and I was half-asleep; hearing the song was like an awakening. I didn't have a place in this society and it suddenly hit me that this was music that I could play, something I could be part of."

This was a time when Asians were largely invisible in popular culture. It was the emergence of punk, with its ethos that anyone could be in a band, that inspired the young Asians to believe they could emulate their musical heroes. "The band was formed in response to punk," confirms Abbas. "It meshed so well with the politics of the time and I remember watching as the white kids of punk began jamming with the black guys doing reggae and thinking we brown kids don't have anything."

Rock Against Racism, set up with the explicit aim of countering the electoral threat of the National Front, largely consisted of well-meaning white bands alongside some black musicians; out on the streets, it was Asians who were being stabbed and killed. "Our story of being second-generation Asians was not being heard," says Bilgrami. "There was no one else saying what we wanted to say."...

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@'The Guardian'

Lee Perry - I Am The Upsetter

Scratch updates his '60s rock steady hit "I am the Upsetter" at Joe Gibbs recording studio in 1982. Footage includes shots in the control room with the late great Errol Thompson at the controls, assisting Scratch as he annoints the studio with ganja during playback,