Tuesday, 10 August 2010
♪♫ Grinderman - Heathen Child
Thu 11 November - Phoenix, Toronto, ON
Fri 12 November - Metropolis, Montreal, QC
Sat 13 November - House of Blues, Boston, MA
Sun 14 November - Nokia Theatre, New York, NY
Tue 16 November - 9:30 Club, Washington, DC
Thu 18 November - Variety Playhouse, Atlanta, GA
Fri 19 November - Cannery Ballroom, Nashville, TN
Sat 20 November - Minglewood Hall, Memphis, TN
Mon 22 November - Riviera Theatre, Chicago, IL
Tue 23 November - First Avenue, Minneapolis, MN
Fri 26 November - Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver, BC
Sat 27 November - King Cat Theater, Seattle, WA
Mon 29 November - Warfield, San Francisco, CA
Tue 30 November - Music Box, Los Angeles, CA
Wed 1 December - House of Blues, San Diego, CA
Monday, 9 August 2010
As The Drug War Rages On, Will Mexico Surrender?
Mexico is in the midst of its most violent confrontation with drug traffickers, with an estimated 28,000 people killed since President Felipe Calderon declared war on drug cartels soon after he took office in late 2006.
But drug trafficking has long gone on in Mexico, and for many decades operated under the eye of the government, according to analysts. Mexico changing politics has, in effect, changed the way drug cartels operate.
The Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, ruled Mexico for most of the 20th century. After 71 years in power, the party finally lost the presidency in 2000.
From the 1960s through the '80s, organized crime was intertwined with the government, according to Diego Enrique Osorno, a Mexican journalist and author of the recently published history, The Sinaloa Cartel.
"In this period, you have to remember that the PRI had control of everything," Osorno says. The PRI controlled the press, the oil fields, politics and even the narcotics trade.
Osorno obtained the memoires of Miguel Felix Gallardo, the founder of the Guadalajara cartel. "Gallardo viewed himself as essentially a soldier of the PRI," Osorno says. "He worked for the system to maintain order. Back then, the PRI had a monopoly on power."
George Grayson, a professor at the College of William and Mary, says the PRI covertly cut deals with the criminals to allow a particular trafficker to operate in a particular part of Mexico.
"The capos would pay bribes to local, state and federal officials; in return, the government would turn a blind eye to their activities," he says.
But Mexican drug gangs under the PRI had to follow strict rules. They were supposed to act discreetly, spurn kidnapping, avoid killing civilians and not encroach on another cartel's turf.
"If in fact the cartels broke the rules of the game, the PRI had the capacity to come down on them like a ton of bricks," Grayson says.
A major narcotics trafficker at the time was Pablo Acosta. In the mid-1980s, Acosta controlled smuggling along a swath of the Texas border south of El Paso.
Terrence Poppa, a reporter at the El Paso Herald Post, wrote a biography of Acosta titled Drug Lord to try to explain how the Mexican drug trafficking business worked. What he discovered shocked him.
"It was an organized type of protection that ran all the way to Mexico City, and involved the top layers of government, including the president of Mexico," he says.
Poppa found that the governor's office in Chihuahua state had sold Acosta the right to control drug smuggling around the border area adjacent to the Big Bend area of Texas.
Each month, Poppa says, Acosta paid the local police, military and particular PRI officials a cut of his profits. Those PRI officials in turn sent money each month to their bosses further up the governmental hierarchy.
"It was a protection set-up. And this is what Pablo Acosta benefited from. And that was how he was able to operate, and all other traffickers in Mexico — it was like a universal system," Poppa says.
With so many people in government getting bribes, there was little incentive to crack down on the narcotics trade. The PRI's kickback system even encouraged the cartels to expand, Poppa says.
The cartels ramped up their arms smuggling networks. They diversified into legitimate businesses to launder their profits. They recruited special forces soldiers to be their muscle.
Then the PRI lost the presidency in 2000 to Vicente Fox and his National Action Party, or PAN, and Mexico was left with a monster it couldn't control.
"The PRI gave an enormous amount of space for organized crime to flourish," Poppa says. "An enormous amount of space."
Calderon, also of PAN, won election in 2006 and succeeded Fox. Calderon's government is working to crack down on the cartels, but organized crime is fighting back with heavy weapons, grenades and even car bombs.
The offensive has destabilized parts of the country, scared away foreign investment and left thousands dead. And despite the deployment of thousands of federal forces, some of the corrupt structures established under the PRI still exist, analysts say.
Calderon has blamed the United States and its appetite for cocaine, marijuana and other substances for stoking the conflict through drug consumption. "It's as if our neighbor were the biggest drug addict in the world," he wrote in an editorial printed in Mexican newspapers in June.
In the Mexican Congress, there have been calls for the country to give up the drug war entirely and legalize all narcotics.
Poppa says that if the United States were to decriminalize drugs it would help eliminate the huge profits garnered by the brutal cartels.
"In my view, the best reason for ending drug prohibition is to save Mexico, to save the democracy of Mexico that the Mexican people have struggled so hard to gain," he says.
Ironically, one of the effects of the drug violence has been a resurgence in popularity for the PRI, says Denise Dresser, a political scientist in Mexico City.
The PRI is seeking to shed its past image as corrupt and authoritarian. The party has made gains in recent local elections and is seeking to regain the presidency in 2012. It has promised it can manage the cartels far better than Calderon.
"It's as if the Communist Party were resurgent in Russia. We're witnessing, in many ways, the return of an authoritarian party that governed Mexico for 71 years," Dresser says.
The drug war has dominated Calderon's term in office, but despite his declarations to the contrary, there are few signs that he's winning.
Whoever wins the 2012 elections is expected to take a new approach toward the cartels. Many voters may even hope for a return to the days when the PRI let organized crime run drugs unfettered up to the U.S. border, but kept the violence off the streets.
Jason Beaubien @'npr'
'Straddling' bus – a cheaper, greener and faster alternative to commute
A big concern on top of urban transportation planner’s mind is how to speed up the traffic: putting more buses on the road will jam the roads even worse and deteriorate the air; building more subway is costly and time consuming. Well, here is an cheaper, greener and fast alternative to lighten their mind up a bit: the straddling bus, first exhibited on the 13th Beijing International High-tech Expo in May this year. In the near future, the model is to be put into pilot use in Beijing’s Mentougou District (bjnews). (The official site of the high-tech expo put it as 3D fast bus, which I think is more confusing, for now I’ll just call it the straddling bus.)
Proposed by Shenzhen Hashi Future Parking Equipment Co., Ltd, the model looks like a subway or light-rail train bestriding the road. It is 4-4.5 m high with two levels: passengers board on the upper level while other vehicles lower than 2 m can go through under. Powered by electricity and solar energy, the bus can speed up to 60 km/h carrying 1200-1400 passengers at a time without blocking other vehicles’ way. Also it costs about 500 million yuan to build the bus and a 40-km-long path for it, only 10% of building equivalent subway. It is said that the bus can reduce traffic jams by 20-30%.
Here is the presentation by Song Youzhou, chairman of Shenzhen Hashi Future Parking Equipment Co., Ltd.
Translation:
What you can see from the video is traffic jams, what you can hear is noise, and there is also invisible air pollution. At present, there are mainly 4 types of public transits in China: subway, light-rail train, BRT, and normal bus. They have advantages and disadvantages, for example, subway costs a lot and takes long time to build; BRT takes up road spaces and produces noises as well as pollution to the air. How to develop environmental-friendly public transportation? Straddling bus provides a solution. Let’s watch a demonstration.
The straddling bus combines the advantages of BRT, it is also a substitution for BRT and subway in the future. As you all know, the majority vehicle on the road is car, the shortest vehicle is also car. Normally our overpass is 4.5-5.5 m high. The highlight innovation of straddling bus is that it runs above car and under overpass. Its biggest strength is saving road spaces, efficient and high in capacity. It can reduce up to 25-30% traffic jams on main routes. Running at an average 40 km/h, it can take 1200 people at a time, which means 300 passengers per cart.
Another strength of straddling bus is its short construction life cycle: only 1 year to build 40 km. Whereas building 40-km subway will take 3 years at best. Also the straddling bus will not need the large parking lot that normal buses demand. It can park at its own stop without affecting the passage of cars. This is what the interior looks like: it has huge skylight that will eliminate passengers’ sense of depression when enter.
There are two parts in building the straddling bus. One is remodeling the road, the other is building station platforms. Two ways to remodel the road: we can go with laying rails on both sides of car lane, which save 30% energy; or we can paint two white lines on both sides and use auto-pilot technology in the bus, which will follow the lines and run stable.
There are also two ways in dealing with station platform. One is to load/unload through the sides; the other is using the built-in ladder so that passengers can go up and to the overpass through the ceiling door.
Straddling bus is completely powered by municipal electricity and solar energy system. In terms of electricity, the setting is called relay direct current electrification. The bus itself is electrical conductor, two rails built on top to allow the charging post to run along with the bus, the next charging post will be on the rails before the earlier one leaves, that is why we call it relay charging. It is new invention, not available yet in other places.
The set here is super capacitor, a device that can charge, discharge and store electricity quickly. The power it stores during the stop can support the bus till the next stop where another round of charging takes place, achieving zero toxic gas throughout the process.
About the ultrasonic waves put forth from the end of the bus, that is to keep those high cars or trucks away from entering the tunnel. Using laser ray to scan, cars get too close to the passage will activate the alarm on the bus end. Inside the bus, there are turning lights that indicate a the bus is intending to make a turn to warn the cars inside. Also radar scanning system is embedded on the walls to warn cars from getting too close to the bus wheels.
Nowadays many big cities have remodeled their traffic signaling system, to prioritize public buses, that is to say when a bus reaches a crossing, red light on the other side of the fork will turn on automatically to give buses the right of way. Our straddling bus can learn from this BRT method. The car can make the turn with the bus if that is the direction it wants to go too; if not, the red light will be on to stop the cars beneath while the bus take the turn.
The bus is 6 m in width and 4-4.5 m high. How will people get off the bus if an accident happens to such a huge bus? Here I introduce the most advanced escaping system in the world. In the case of fire or other emergencies, the escaping door will open automatically. I believe many of you have been on a plane. Planes are equipped with inflated ladder so people can slide down on it in emergency. I put the escaping concept into the straddling bus. It is the fastest way to escape.
The bus can save up to 860 ton of fuel per year, reducing 2,640 ton of carbon emission. Presently we have passed the first stage demonstration and will get through all of the technical invalidation by the end of August. Beijing’s Mentougou District is carrying out a eco-community project, it has already planned out 186 km for our straddling bus. Construction will begin at year end.
Thank you.
Annie Lee @'China Hush'
Indonesian Muslim preacher Bashir in terror arrest
Indonesian police have arrested the controversial Muslim preacher Abu Bakir Bashir on terror charges.
Officials said they had proof he was linked a training camps recently discovered in Aceh, West Sumatra.
Mr Bashir is known for fiery anti-Western rhetoric but proof of direct engagement in attacks has been elusive.
The discovery in February of training camps in Aceh showed the opening of a new front in the country's often successful campaign against extremism.
The anti-terror police unit Detachment 88 detained Mr Bashir because of links to Islamic militant training camps, a government official said.
He is believed to be the head of a hardline Islamist group, the Jema'ah Ansharut Tauhid.
Mr Bashir's lawyer, Muhammad Ali, said his client was arrested in the Ciamis district of West Java.
Founder of the Ngruki boarding school in East Java, he was the spiritual adviser to young men who went on to mount the Bali bomb attacks of 2002 which killed 202 people.
Mr Bashir was released from prison in 2006 after serving several years for involvement with Jemaah Islamiah, the group responsible for the Bali bombings.
His history of activism goes back to the 1980s when then-President Suharto imprisoned him for advocating that Indonesia should be an Islamic state.
The Brussels-based International Crisis Group has reported a general decline in violent extremism across Indonesia but has stressed the ability of the remaining small groups to commit terrorist acts.
It said in a report last month that some members of JAT were involved in violent plots foiled by police.
This weekend, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said he had been saved from an attack on his life by anti-terror police.
Last July, simultaneous suicide bomb attacks on two five-star hotels in Jakarta killed nine people.
DooneyStudio RT @mediahunter Family First candidate Wendy Francis y'day compared gay marriage to “legalising child abuse'' [More Oz election weirdness]
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