“I don’t want to give a definition of thinking, but if I had to I should probably be unable to say anything more about it than that it was a sort of buzzing that went on inside my head.”
FICTIVE FRIDAYS : #19
2 hours ago
Monday, 18 January 2010
Pro-Palestinian hackers target Web site of top British Jewish newspaper
Britain's flagship Jewish newspaper, the Jewish Chronicle, was taken over on Monday morning by pro-Palestinian hackers.
The homepage of the Web site, which was rendered unavailable in the wake of the hack, was replaced with a Palestinian flag and a message reading "Hacked by Palestinian Mujaheeds."
Apparently angered by the newspaper's support for Israel, the message also says: "Arent you ashamed of giving tolerance to Jewish who is the main actor of wars with being of children killers? Arent you ashamed of giving support to vampire who doesn't care any human life?"
The homepage of the Jewish Chronicle after it was hacked Jewish Chronicle Editor Stephen Pollard confirmed the paper's Web site had been replaced by anti-Semitic messages for several hours.
"Somebody hacked into the site and had a message up for a couple of hours," Pollard told AP. "It did no damage, as far as we can tell."
Pollard said the attack could be related to the diplomatic feud that erupted between Israel and Turkey last week, but added: "I don't want to
speculate."
The Turkish government was outraged when Israel's deputy foreign minister
denied their ambassador a handshake and forced him to sit on a low sofa as the cameras rolled. Israel has since apologized.
The homepage of the Web site, which was rendered unavailable in the wake of the hack, was replaced with a Palestinian flag and a message reading "Hacked by Palestinian Mujaheeds."
Apparently angered by the newspaper's support for Israel, the message also says: "Arent you ashamed of giving tolerance to Jewish who is the main actor of wars with being of children killers? Arent you ashamed of giving support to vampire who doesn't care any human life?"
"Somebody hacked into the site and had a message up for a couple of hours," Pollard told AP. "It did no damage, as far as we can tell."
Pollard said the attack could be related to the diplomatic feud that erupted between Israel and Turkey last week, but added: "I don't want to
speculate."
The Turkish government was outraged when Israel's deputy foreign minister
denied their ambassador a handshake and forced him to sit on a low sofa as the cameras rolled. Israel has since apologized.
Patti Smith & Robert Mapplethorpe: Bohemian Soul Mates in Obscurity
Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe were both born in 1946, at a time when “the iceman” and “the last of the horse-drawn wagons” could still be seen on city streets. Ms. Smith points this out at the start of her tenderly evocative memoir, “Just Kids,” but there is even stronger evidence that this book dates back a long time.
“Just Kids” captures a moment when Ms. Smith and Mapplethorpe were young, inseparable, perfectly bohemian and completely unknown, to the point in which a touristy couple in Washington Square Park spied them in the early autumn of 1967 and argued about whether they were worth a snapshot. The woman thought they looked like artists. The man disagreed, saying dismissively, “They’re just kids.”
How hard is it for Ms. Smith to turn back the clock to this innocent time? Hard. Exactly as hard as it was for Bob Dylan to describe himself as a wide-eyed young newcomer to Greenwich Village in “Chronicles, Volume I,” a memoir that “Just Kids” deliberately resembles.
In describing the day that Mapplethorpe created his exquisitely androgynous image of her in white shirt, black pants and black jacket for the cover of her “Horses” album, she describes deliberately giving the jacket a rakish “Frank Sinatra style” fling over her shoulder. “I was full of references,” she says, invoking them explicitly throughout the book. A Patti Smith calendar would include Joan of Arc’s birthday, the day of the Guernica bombing and the day she, as a young bookstore clerk, sat among Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Grace Slick in a bar feeling “an inexplicable sense of kinship with these people.”
Of all the artists who shaped Ms. Smith’s persona, Mr. Dylan is arguably the one she worshiped most. She describes the 19th-century poet Arthur Rimbaud, another of her heroes, as looking like the 20th-century Mr. Dylan, rather than seeing things the other way around. So it makes perfect sense for her to use a memoirist’s sleight of hand, as Mr. Dylan did, to recapture an eager, fervent and wondrously malleable young spirit. It also makes sense for her to cast off all verbal affectation and write in a strong, true voice unencumbered by the polarizing mannerisms of her poetry. This Patti Smith, like the one in Steven Sebring’s haunting 2008 documentary “Patti Smith: Dream of Life,” is a newly mesmerizing figure, not quite the one her die-hard fans used to know.
In “Just Kids” Ms. Smith writes of becoming pregnant at 19 (“I was humbled by nature”) in New Jersey, giving up her baby and heading to New York for a fresh start. Describing herself as “I, the country mouse,” she writes of heading to Brooklyn to visit friends and discovering that those friends had moved away.
In a back bedroom of their former apartment she encountered Mapplethorpe for the first time: “a sleeping youth cloaked in light,” a beautiful young man who resembled a hippie shepherd at a time when Ms. Smith had been contemptuously described as looking like “Dracula’s daughter.”
Thus fate introduced Ms. Smith and Mapplethorpe, who would become roommates, soul mates, friends, lovers and muses. Strictly speaking they were never starving artists in a garret, but the romanticism and mythmaking of “Just Kids,” and their tenancy in the tiniest room at the Chelsea Hotel, brings them pretty close to that ideal.
They went to museums able to afford only one ticket. (The one who saw the exhibition would describe it to the one who waited outside.) They went to Coney Island, able to afford only one hot dog. (Ms. Smith got the sauerkraut.) They loved the same totems and ornaments and flourishes; they valued the same things, though in different ways. “We were both praying for Robert’s soul,” Ms. Smith writes of Mapplethorpe’s frank ambition — especially when he fell under the influence of Warhol, someone she deeply mistrusted — “he to sell it and I to save it.” She goes on to suggest caustically that it was his prayers that were answered.
But much of “Just Kids” unfolds before Mapplethorpe did the taboo-busting, shock-laden photographic work for which he is best remembered. (“I admired him for it, but I could not comprehend the brutality,” Ms. Smith writes of his sadomasochistic imagery.) And it occurs before his illness. (He died of AIDS in 1989.) Of the two of them it was Ms. Smith who made her mark first. Like “Chronicles,” “Just Kids” carries its author to the verge of fame but stops right there on the brink, so that its innocence is never compromised by circumstances too surreal or hagiographic for the reader. This book achieves its aura of the sacrosanct by insisting that the later, more doomy and fraught part of Ms. Smith’s life story belongs elsewhere.
It’s possible to come away from “Just Kids” with an intact image of the title’s childlike kindred spirits who listened to Tim Hardin’s delicate love songs, wondered if they could afford the extra 10 cents for chocolate milk and treasured each geode, tambourine or silver skull they shared, never wanting what they couldn’t have or unduly caring what the future might bring. If it sometimes sounds like a fairy tale, it also conveys a heartbreakingly clear idea of why Ms. Smith is entitled to tell one.
So she enshrines her early days with Mapplethorpe this way: “We gathered our colored pencils and sheets of paper and drew like wild, feral children into the night, until, exhausted, we fell into bed.” They sound like Hansel and Gretel, living in a state of shared delight, blissfully unaware of what awaited on the path ahead.
Astronomy pic of the day
The Moon moved to partly block the Sun for a few minutes last week as a partial solar eclipse became momentarily visible across part of planet Earth. In the above single exposure image, meticulous planning enabled careful photographers to capture the partially eclipsed Sun well posed just above the ancient ruins of the Temple of Poseidon in Sounio, Greece. Unexpectedly, clouds covered the top of the Sun, while a flying bird was caught in flight just to the right of the eclipse. At its fullest extent from some locations, the Moon was seen to cover the entire middle of the Sun, leaving the surrounding ring of fire of an annular solar eclipse. The next solar eclipse -- a total eclipse of the Sun -- will occur on 2010 July 11 but be visible only from a thin swath of the southern Pacific Ocean and near the very southern tip of South America.
(Thanx Ana!)
Suicide bombers, gunmen attack central Kabul
Taliban gunmen, some wearing suicide vests, launched a commando-style assault on Kabul on Monday, attacking banks, a shopping mall and Afghan government ministries.
It was the largest and most brazen attack on the city in nearly a year. Gunfire and loud explosions could be heard across the capital and a huge column of smoke was pouring out of a shopping centre that was at the heart of the attacks.
The Taliban claimed responsibility, saying 20 of their fighters were involved. It came as some members of President Hamid Karzai's new cabinet were being sworn in.
By mid-morning, the main battle was at the Grand Afghan Shopping Centre, a large indoor shopping mall near the justice ministry and presidential palace in the centre of the town that was ablaze, with gunmen holed up inside.
A large explosion could be heard later in another part of the central district of diplomatic and government offices. Private Tolo television said it was a suicide car-bomb outside another shopping mall.
Defence Ministry spokesman Zaher Azimy said of the scene at the Grand Afghan Shopping Centre: "The store is under siege and we are involved in clash with those inside. Some security forces have managed to get inside the store."
NATO forces said at least two armed insurgents were killed.
Mohammad Shah, a shopkeeper in the centre, said: "There was an explosion at the presidential palace gate and then three people who looked like suicide bombers entered the shopping centre and went to the second and third floor.
"There were gunshots from security people, there was black smoke inside the building and the security guys escorted us out," he said. "People carrying RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) went inside the basement ... the second and third floor are partly burnt down."
ATTACKERS HOLED UP, SOME WITH SUICIDE VESTS
Afghan forces cordoned off parts of central Kabul as the fighting erupted.
"At least ten people who are suicide bombers are in several buildings, including in banks and shopping centres," said Amir Mohammad, a security officer said at the scene.
Another security source said as many as 30 attackers could be involved in clashes and at least three people had been killed.
"Gunmen are besieged in the store," he told Reuters. "We believe suicide bombers are among them."
Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesman for the Taliban, said 20 of the insurgent group's fighters, including suicide bombers, had occupied several government buildings and were fighting Afghan security forces.
A Reuters correspondent inside the vice president's office which is close to government buildings and ministries targeted by attackers, was rushed into a safe room with other officials as the sound of gunfire was in the streets outside.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said it was "working closely with our Afghan partners to aggressively contain the situation."
Several small explosions were reported near the Grand Afghan Centre and nearby Serena Hotel.
The hotel, where many foreigners stay, was near the scene but did not appear to have come under direct attack.
"It is a chaotic scene, we do not know what to do and where to go," an official in a building belonging to the ministry of telecommunications near the presidential palace told Reuters.
The attack was the biggest in Kabul since gunmen stormed the justice ministry and other government buildings in February.
Doing Disaster Relief Right
There’s a reason President Obama’s response to catastrophe has been so much better than Bush’s. It helps to believe in the power of government to aid lives.
Here’s something you’re not supposed to say: Barack Obama has responded to the earthquake in Haiti much better than George W. Bush responded to Hurricane Katrina or the Indian Ocean tsunami. Here’s something you’re really not supposed to say: He’s responded better because he’s a liberal. Liberals see responding to humanitarian disasters, including overseas, as a more fundamental responsibility of government than conservatives do. Don’t take my word for it—listen to the nation’s most influential conservative commentators themselves.
The fact that Obama has responded better is obvious—pundits and politicians just aren’t supposed to say so for fear of politicizing a tragedy. Within half an hour of learning of the Haitian earthquake, the White House released a statement. The president cleared his public schedule the following day, and received five briefings in 26 hours. The secretaries of State and Defense both cut short trips to Asia, and Obama and Hillary Clinton each named one of their closest aides (Dennis McDonough at the National Security Council, Cheryl Mills at State) to coordinate disaster relief. Hillary personally visited the island, and Vice President Joe Biden met Haitian-Americans in Miami. Within a day of the earthquake, a U.S. aircraft carrier was en route and Obama had announced $100 million in aid.
Compare that to the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina. Twelve hours before Katrina reached the U.S., Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff flew to Atlanta to attend a conference on bird flu, even though he and the president had already been warned that a major hurricane could breach New Orleans’ levees. On Tuesday morning, August 30, a day after the hurricane hit, Bush flew to California to commemorate America’s World War II victory over Japan; then returned to Crawford, Texas, to continue his vacation. On Wednesday, he flew over the devastated Gulf Coast, but didn’t set foot there till Friday. Even Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter gave the administration’s response an F.
Similarly, it took a vacationing Bush three days to make a public statement about the Indian Ocean tsunami that killed a quarter of a million people. His administration’s initial aid pledge was $15 million, which led the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs to call the response of America and other Western countries “stingy.” Stung by the criticism, Bush later increased U.S. aid, and oversaw a substantial humanitarian effort by the American military. But as with Katrina, his initial response was passive, if not downright negligent...
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US doctors beg their government to admit critically injured children from Haiti
American doctors are begging their Government to accept critically injured Haitian children after one baby girl was airlifted to hospital in Florida.
Meanwhile, in an exercise dubbed Operation Pierre Pan, the Catholic Church in Miami is drawing up plans to rescue thousands of Haitian orphans, mirroring the Operation Pedro Pan airlift of 1960 in which 14,000 Cuban children were taken to the city.
US immigration officials had been refusing to allow children into the country until next weekend. However, as Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, arrived to assure Haitians that America stood ready to help “in any way we can”, doctors managed to persuade the US authorities to allow in Jean, a four-month-old Haitian girl for treatment. The orphaned child has cut through immigration rules used to bar entry to the US for Haitians even in extreme circumstances.
The charity Medishare had been considering defying US immigration by putting Jean physically in the giant hands of Alonzo Mourning, a basketball star, who has given millions to the charity and spent three days last week clearing rubbish in its tented clinic in Port-au-Prince. “We wanted to have him on the plane and carry the kid through Customs,” Arthur Fournier, a founder of Medishare, said. In the event US officials relented.
However, by Saturday night only 23 Haitians had been admitted to US hospitals.
Jean, as she was named by medics, was pulled from the wreckage of her home on Saturday. She was barely alive after spending 85 hours without water. Her parents are thought to have died in the rubble of their home.
Taken to a tented clinic on the city’s main UN compound, Jean was resuscitated and then flown to Fort Lauderdale. She was recovering yesterday at Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami.
“We can’t evacuate any Haitian patients to the US,” John McDonald, from the University of Miami Medical School, said. “Our country treats the Haitians like s***. The people land, they get sent back. When Cubans land, they open restaurants.”
Another doctor at the tented clinic said that she was so desperate at being forced to discharge children still in grave danger of dying from infection that she wanted to “scream and scratch people”. For want of bed space “we are sending wounded children back on to the streets of Port-au-Prince with no plan even for how they will be fed,” said Jennifer Furn, from Harvard Medical School.
Dr Furn’s task was complicated by instructions from the UN to vacate the tents by 8am yesterday. “The UN say they need these tents as a staging post for regular personnel,” Dr Furn said. “It’s breaking my heart. How can I send children with wounds and head bandages out into the streets?”
A spokesman for Minustah, the permanent UN operation in Haiti, insisted that alternative premises were being found, but there was no sign of them hours before the deadline.
In Miami, church representatives are lobbying the US Department of Homeland Security to allow Haitian children left homeless or without parents to be given shelter in the US. The archdiocese has been deluged with offers of help from families, including Cubans who came to Miami as youngsters during Pedro Pan — the Spanish name for Peter Pan — 50 years ago.
“We, the former Pedro Pan children, have a solemn duty to help these children benefit from our unique experience, so that one day they have the tools to return to their homeland and help rebuild it,” said Carmen Valdivia, 60, who was sent to Miami by her parents at 12 to save her from communist indoctrination.
The plan, which is still at a preliminary stage, is being spearheaded by Deacon Richard Turcotte, the chief executive officer of the archdiocese’s community aid wing, Catholic Charities. “It could be a tremendous opportunity to stabilise these children and help heal them from this terrible, terrible disaster,” Mr Turcotte said.
Pedro Pan was the largest recorded exodus of unaccompanied children in the western hemisphere. It remained a secret for three decades.
Back in Port-au-Prince, Mr Mourning sat exhausted, inured to the screaming of a boy whose broken leg had been reset without painkillers. “The US is an hour and a half from here,” he said. “The children here have devastating injuries and we can only patch them up. It makes no sense. We can help everybody here if we get our priorities straight.”
In this clinic, as in others, the suffering, the stoicism and the heroism of the doctors are remarkable. It is hard to apportion blame when hundreds are working bravely; it is hard also to avoid the suspicion that bureaucracies within the UN and the US are, at times, behaving as if this earthquake never happened.
Meanwhile, Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, has spoken of the “thin line between medicine and media” after he was left in charge of 20 critically injured patients when a UN team of Belgian doctors left because of security fears. Critics accused CNN of exploiting the situation and blurring reporting after Dr Gupta, 40, a neurosurgeon who turned down an invitation last year to become US Surgeon-General, was shown tending to a 15-day-old baby. He wrote on Twitter: “Yes, I am a reporter, but a doctor first.”
UR
It has been two decades since the most political group in the history of techno set out to change the course of electronic music: Underground Resistance. Time to pay tribute to the heralds of a sonic revolution.
In late 1989, on November 2 to be precise, two individuals from Detroit, Michigan, decided it was time for a change: 'Mad' Mike Banks, formerly a bass player for Parliament and producer for a dance music crew called Members of House, and Jeff 'The Wizard' Mills, at the time a DJ on local radio station WJLB, formed a collective henceforth known as the Underground Resistance. Inspired by radical factions of the civil rights movements, such as the Black Panthers, and political hip-hop groups like Public Enemy, UR desired to take social activism to a musical genre previously deemed incapable of conveying political messages: techno.
Where the genre's founding fathers had set their sights on an imagined future, UR opened their eyes to the dystopia of present day Detroit: Abandoned neighbourhoods, urban desolation, still prevailing racism, and cultural hegemony firmly in the hands of a privileged few.
Where the genre's founding fathers had set their sights on an imagined future, UR opened their eyes to the dystopia of present day Detroit: Abandoned neighbourhoods, urban desolation, still prevailing racism, and cultural hegemony firmly in the hands of a privileged few.
Fuel for the Fire
While UR's initial collaborations with Members Of The House singer Yolanda Reynolds ('Your Time Is Up' and 'Living For The Nite') still clung to the blueprint of piano vocal house, Banks and Mills soon stepped up the intensity. The pair was joined by Robert 'Noise' Hood, who had previously featured as a rapper on the rare UR production 'Dance To The Beat', as a third member, and together the henceforth face- and nameless group entered their most productive phase.
In little over two years Banks, Hood and Mills recorded over a dozen 12"s in various permutations of the line-up, growing harder and more radical in both sound and image with each new release. The 'Sonic' and 'Waveform' EPs were followed by 'Riot' and 'Fuel For The Fire', and 'Punisher's permutation of the eponymous comic book hero's logo became the most iconic and eagerly reproduced symbol for UR's political cause against oppression, discrimination and cultural commercialisation.
Message to the Majors
After Hood and Mills' demise Mike Banks further opened up UR as a platform to feature and promote like-minded local artists. Veteran producer James Pennington (a.k.a. Suburban Knight) joined the ranks of the Resistance as did new artists like Scan-7, Gerald Mitchell and, perhaps most notably, Drexciya, a group long shrouded in mystery, whose brilliant experimental electro productions paved the way for a worldwide resurgence of the genre.
Condition Red
It was one of this new generation of artists who in 1999 suddenly found himself in the middle of UR's biggest success and at the same time biggest controversy. Together with Mad Mike and Gerald Mitchell, 'DJ Rolando' Rocha had recorded the track 'Jaguar'. Its ingenious chord progressions made the track a world-wide club hit, quickly crossing over from underground dance floors to stylish Ibiza discos.
Clever managers at Sony/BMG Germany took note, and, when UR unsurprisingly declined to license the track, decided to have it covered by studio musicians note by note. While to be considered legal by German law, the cover version outraged the group's fans and supporters as a symbol for the commercial exploitation UR have been opposing for so long. Amidst those protests, Sony/BMG eventually withdrew the release from the market and issued a letter of apology to UR - a small victory for the underground.
Transition
When UR's original headquarters had to make way for the new Red Wings Hockey Stadium at the beginning of the new millennium, the UR collective moved into a new building at 3000 E. Grand Blvd., along with related distribution company Submerge. UR once again entered a new phase with the '3000' building, designed and intended as communal hub for techno culture.
New artists once again joined the resistance's ranks, such as legendary Amsterdam techno producer Orlando Voorn, who lived in Detroit between 2003 and 2007, and numerous other artists, such as Santiago 'S2' Salazar and the anonymous Aquanauts. Mad Mike further returned to his live music roots, assembling an all-star band around his Galaxy 2 Galaxy project, which he has been taking on tour to much acclaim.
Besides the most recent UR album, 'Electronic Warfare 2.0', which includes the programmatic hit 'Kill My Radio Station', two compilations give an insight into the activities of Detroit's greatest producer collective over the past decade: 'Interstellar Fugitives' and its follow-up 'Interstellar Fugitives - Destruction of Order'. Besides these two exhaustive compilations, new UR releases might have become fewer and further between, but as long as they reach us via obscure channels from time to time, we can be certain that somewhere in Detroit the resistance is busy at work, plotting war on the programmers, and electrifying the city with sci-fi thoughts and hi-tech dreams.
Naomi Klein Issues Haiti Disaster Capitalism Alert: Stop Them Before They Shock Again
Italy cancels Haiti's debt
The Italian government will cancel the debt of 40 million owed to Italy announced Foreign Minister Franco Frattini in Rome today.
"We are ready from now to cancel Haiti's debt to Italy," Frattini said on his arrival at Rome's Ciampino airport after returning from a mission in Africa.
The cancellation, he said, may represent a "first step for the beginning of reconstruction" of the Caribbean island devastated by the earthquake that has claimed tens of thousands dead.
Italy has already announced a shipment of five million euros to aid necessities.
Now for other countries to follow...?
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