Monday, 11 January 2010

Iran Panel Rebukes Official for Abuses

An Iranian parliamentary committee found Tehran's former prosecutor responsible for the decision to house protesters in an unsuitable detention facility where at least three detainees died from alleged torture, Iranian state media reported Sunday.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, right, arrives to deliver a speech to parliament in Tehran on Sunday. A parliamentary committee blamed a former prosecutor for the decision to detain protesters in a facility where they were allegedly tortured and where at least three died.

The finding by lawmakers represents the highest specific rebuke so far of a government official in the handling of domestic unrest that followed contested June 12 presidential elections.

The committee's findings aren't binding, but they underscore the subtle role the body has played so far in questioning the actions of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government amid postelection unrest.

In the weeks and months that followed the disputed vote, many parliament members demanded an investigation of alleged abuses at Kahrizak, a holding facility where some protesters were detained. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the detention center closed amid allegations of abuse, including rape, of detained protesters.

Last month, military prosecutors said at least three detainees at the facility died due to torture, and they charged 12 prison officials with unspecified offenses related to the deaths. The charges marked a dramatic reversal by the government, which had for months denied any significant abuse, blaming the deaths on an outbreak of meningitis.

On Sunday, the Iranian Students News Agency reported that the parliamentary committee's spokesman had released the full report to lawmakers. It said the report found the decision to move detainees to Kahrizak, despite inhospitable conditions there, was that of Tehran's former prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi.

"The officials in Kahrizak initially refused to receive prisoners but because the judicial official -- Mortazavi -- insisted, they were forced to admit" 147 prisoners into a 750-square-foot space, the Associated Press quoted the report saying. The fact-finding panel "directly blames" Mr. Mortazavi for ordering the transfer, Press TV, the state-run, English-language news outlet reported Sunday. The panel, however, didn't find evidence of rape or sexual abuse at the detention facility, Press TV reported.

Mr. Mortazavi was removed from his post as Tehran prosecutor in August and appointed instead as Iran's deputy prosecutor general. Technically, the move was a promotion, but it also removed him from his high-profile prosecutorial role.

Mr. Mortazavi hasn't commented about his role in transferring detainees to Kahrizak.

@'Wall Street Journal'

The Harvard Psychedelic Club

AP Photo In 1960, Timothy Leary set up an infamous institute at Harvard to experiment with psychedelic drugs. An exclusive excerpt from Don Lattin’s new book on how lifestyle guru Andrew Weil and other freshmen started tripping.
Andy Weil and Ronnie Winston were friends and dorm mates in Claverly Hall. They were both incoming Harvard freshmen when they walked into Leary’s office on Divinity Lane and volunteered to be research subjects in his psychedelic research project. Weil had grown up in a middle-class family. Winston was the son of Harry Winston, the wealthy diamond and jewelry manufacturer whose creations hung around the necks of trophy wives and Hollywood starlets from coast to coast. Neither of them would officially take part in the project, but they would both play an important, little-known role in the rise and fall of Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary.
Winston would eventually be brought into the psychedelic family. Weil would not, and the implications of that unequal treatment would forever alter the careers and life paths of Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert.

He didn’t see the experiences as just an excuse to get high. He wasn’t rebelling against anything. He was just curious, eager to understand what was going on inside his own brain.

Weil and Winston had both read The Doors of Perception, Huxley’s book about the insights the British writer gleaned from his 1953 mescaline trip. They walked into Leary’s little office on Divinity Avenue eager to fly off on their own mystical journey.
They were a bit nervous when they sat down, but Leary soon put them at ease with his soft-spoken charm.
“Yes,” Leary said, “Huxley was the trailblazer. You know, I didn’t have a clue as to the potential of this research until I had my own experience with psilocybin mushrooms over the summer. At its core, you have to understand that this is not an intellectual exercise. It is experiential. It is, and I’m almost embarrassed to say it, religious. But it is more than religious. It is exhilarating. It shows us that the human brain possesses infinite potentialities. It can operate in space-time dimensions that we never dreamed even existed. I feel like I’ve awakened from a long ontological sleep.”
Weil and Winston were on the edge of their seats.
“Anyway,” Leary continued, “the research is pretty straightforward. Our subjects take a controlled dose of synthesized psilocybin. We make sure they are in a safe and comfortable setting. We’re trying to get people from all walks of life, not just graduate students. We’re giving this stuff to priests and prisoners and everyone in between. They do a session about once a month and are expected to write up a two-to three-page report describing the experience. Between sessions, we get together and discuss whatever insights we’ve gleaned from all this. Now, I assume neither of you have had any experience with these substances.”
“No, sir, we have not,” Weil replied. “But we are ready, willing, and able.”
“I can see that,” Leary said. “But I think we may have a little problem. How old are you boys?”
“Eighteen.”
“That’s what I was afraid of. You see, our agreement with the university does not allow us to use undergraduates in this research.”
“That’s what we were afraid of,” Weil said. “To tell you the truth, some of us over at Claverly were thinking of running our own series of tests, and we were wondering if you could clue us in on how we might obtain some of these pills.”
“Well, I could, but I’d better not do that, boys,” Leary replied. “But if you’re persistent, I’m sure you can find your own source.”...

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@'Daily Beast'

One on One - Richard Dawkins (9 January 2010)

Kiribati - A Climate Change Reality

The Americanization of Mental Illness

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,