Monday, 25 April 2011

Tracklist:

01. Hatfield & The North - Aigrette / "Intellectual Exercise" Intro
02. Hatfield & The North - Shaving Is Boring
03. Hatfield & The North - The Other Stubbs Effect / "Captain Spillage" Interlude (Daevid Allen)
04. Steve Hillage - Octave Doctors
05. Lady June - Everythingsnothing
06. Caravan - Be All Right
07. Caravan - Memory Lain, Hugh
08. Matching Mole - Instant Pussy
09. Robert Wyatt - Gharbzadegi
10. Gong - Radio Gnome Prediction (Intro) / And You Tried So Hard
11. Gong - Flying Teapot
12. Gong - Pot Head Pixies
13. Robert Wyatt - Age Of Self
14. Fred Frith - Carnival On Wall St / "Being Defined" Interlude (Fred Frith)
15. John Greaves - Salt
16. Gong - Shamal
17. Robert Wyatt - Stalin Wasn't Stallin'
18. Caravan - No Back Stage Pass
19. Robert Wyatt - To Carla Marsha And Caroline / "Jolly Clever" Interlude (Robert Wyatt, Mike Ratledge)
20. The Soft Machine - Have You Ever Bean Green? / Pataphysical Introduction PT.1
21. Kevin Ayers - Goodnight Goodnight

No Mas Presents: Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No by James Blagden

(Thanx Scurvy & Marc!)

"William S. Burroughs II" print, by Will Lamb 1999
Via

Guantanamo Bay: Why Obama hasn’t fulfilled his promise to close the facility

Rolling Through The Bay

Scott Weaver's amazing piece, made with over 100,000 toothpicks over the course of 35 years, is a depiction of San Francisco, with multiple ball runs that allow you to go on "tours" of different parts of the city. It will be on display in the Tinkering Studio until the end of June!
Via

Will WikiLeaks vs. NYT, The Guardian & Daniel Domscheit-Berg Drama Overshadow Contents of Gitmo Files?

UN Human Rights Council representative Juan E. Méndez on the plight of Private Bradley Manning

Guantánamo Bay files: Casio wristwatch 'the sign of al-Qaida'

The Casio F-91W wristwatch, regarded by Guantánamo Bay interrogators as a sign of al-Qaida involvement.

It is cheap, basic and widely available around the world. Yet the Casio F-91W digital watch was declared to be "the sign of al-Qaida" and a contributing factor to continued detention of prisoners by the analysts stationed at Guantánamo Bay.
Briefing documents used to train staff in assessing the threat level of new detainees advise that possession of the F-91W – available online for as little as £4 – suggests the wearer has been trained in bomb making by al-Qaida in Afghanistan.
The report states: "The Casio was known to be given to the students at al-Qaida bomb-making training courses in Afghanistan at which the students received instruction in the preparation of timing devices using the watch.
"Approximately one-third of the JTF-GTMO detainees that were captured with these models of watches have known connections to explosives, either having attended explosives training, having association with a facility where IEDs were made or where explosives training was given, or having association with a person identified as an explosives expert."
More than 50 detainee reports refer to the Casio timepieces. The records of 32 detainees refer to the black Casio F-91W, while a further 20 make reference to the silver version, the A-159W.
James Ball @'The Guardian'

171 Minutes With Evan Dando and Juliana Hatfield

Berlusconi's senators try to bring fascism back to Italian politics

A group of Italian senators is pressing for a decades-old ban on Benito Mussolini's Fascist party to be lifted in a move that has provoked fierce condemnation from political opponents and Jewish leaders.

The five members of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's ruling People of Liberty (Pdl) party, led by Senator Cristano De Eccher, presented a bill to the Italian senate arguing that a constitutional rule that prohibits the "reorganisation in any form [of the dissolved Fascist party]", is outdated and should be scrapped.

Mussolini rose to power after the end of the First World War and by the mid-1920s established a fascist dictatorship. His National Fascist Party ruled the country until 1943 and was a key ally of Nazi Germany. The party's reformation has been explicitly banned since the 1950s, when Italy's post-war constitution also outlawed Fascist symbols.

Senate Speaker Renato Schifani, also of the Pdl, was said to be "aghast" at the attempt to lift the ban, says a report by the news agency Ansa.

Emanuele Fiano, the Democratic Party's home affairs spokesman, told The Independent: "A founding basis of this Italian republic is its opposition to fascism. The laws banning the reformation of the Fascist party or apologising for it should remain untouchable."

Roberto Pacifici, leader of the Jewish Community of Rome, said: "It's an extremely worrying proposal." James Walston, a politics professor at the American University in Rome, said: "This is another manifestation of the long-term rehabilitation of fascism in Italy. It might not happen soon, it might never happen, but it's been under way since 1994. People are setting out to revise Italian history." In 1994, during Mr Berlusconi's first term as Prime Minister, direct heirs to Mussolini's Fascist party were given jobs in government for the first time since the party was banned.

One neo-Fascist was Mirko Tremaglia, the Minister for Italians Abroad, who as a young man defended Mussolini's Salo' Italian Social Republic, as recently as 2002 lamented the Second World War pivotal defeat of the Italians and the Afrika Korps at El Alamein. A senior figure in Mr Berlusconi's present cabinet, Defence Minister Ignazio La Russa, is also often accused of being a neo-Fascist. He was part of the old National Alliance party, which had its roots in the neo-Fascist Italian Social Movement formed by Mussolini supporters in 1946.

The present Speaker of the lower house, Gianfranco Fini, was head of the National Alliance, until it merged with Mr Berlusconi's Forza Italia two years ago. But over a period of several years he has renounced his former neo-Fascist sympathies and appears to have made a remarkable transition to a modern-right politician.

His description in 2003 of the "absolute evil" of the fascist era, prompted Mussolini's granddaughter, Alessandra, to quit the party to form her own Social Action grouping with other disgruntled right-wingers.

Press reports suggest that a senator from Mr Fini's own small centre-right Fli (Future and Freedom) party signed the proposal but was immediately threatened with expulsion from the party unless he rescinded his support for the initiative.

Michael Day @'The Independent'