Jeff Tweedy on Wilco's new album

Over the last year, Wilco have taken time out from touring and side-projects to work on their eighth record, the band's first since 2009's Wilco (the album). But now Jeff Tweedy and Co. are in the homestretch, putting in long hours at their Chicago loft studio for an album that's tentatively slated for release in September, on the group's newly formed label dBpm Records.
"We're still chipping away at it," Tweedy tells SPIN. "We're just doing some overdubs and some tracking, but we're pretty far along."
So far, Wilco have laid down some 20 tracks for the album, which has the working title of Get Well Soon Everybody. Tweedy says the material fits into two categories: experimental-leaning rock and "cinematic-sounding country music…you know, folk music."
The band — Tweedy, bassist John Stirrat, guitarist Nels Cline, drummer Glenn Kotche, multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone, and keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen — hasn't decided which tracks will make the final product, but Tweedy says it could end up being a two-disc set. "I don't know what type of record is going to win out or if it just ends up as a double record," he says. "I put off that decision until I know which songs are still kicking my ass."
The finished album may be one of the group's most adventurous yet. "I do think it's a little bit more obnoxious and irreverent of a pop record than people have heard from us, maybe, ever," he says. "And that's exciting. But I have no doubt that the second this record becomes available there's somebody sitting in a basement at their computer with the word 'meh' already typed up, waiting to post a review."...

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Kevin O'Donnell @'SPIN'

Jeff Tweedy, Mikael Jorgensen, Nels Cline, Pat Sansone, Glenn Kotche, John Stirratt (from left) in January 2011 / Photos by Zoran Orlic

France and Italy in call to close EU borders

France and Italy in call to close EU borders in wake of Arab protests
Sarkozy and Berlusconi want passport-free travel within the EU suspended as north African migrants flee north
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Damon Albarn, Dan the Automator, Kid Koala - Untitled

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Lobsang Sangay elected Tibetan exile leader

A Harvard University academic has been elected prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile and will take on the political role previously played by the Dalai Lama.

Lobsang Sangay won 55% of the votes cast by Tibetans around the world.
He defeated two candidates for the role, Tenzin Tethong and Tashi Wangdi.
Mr Sangay must now assume the political functions of the Dalai Lama, who said in March he wanted to devolve this responsibility to an elected official.
The Dalai Lama will retain his role as Tibetan spiritual leader.
'Middle way' The elections were held in March and the result announced on Wednesday in Dharamsala, India, where the Tibetan government-in-exile is based.
"The Election Commission of the Central Tibetan Administration of His Holiness the Dalai Lama has declared Dr Lobsang Sangay as the third kalon tripa," Election Commissioner Jampal Thosang announced, using the Tibetan term for prime minister.

Almost 83,400 Tibetan exiles were eligible to vote and more than 49,000 ballots were cast, he said.

Tenzin Tethong, a former representative of the Dalai Lama in the US, got 37.4% of the vote and Tashi Wangdi, a government-in-exile bureaucrat, received 6.4%.
The 42-year-old winner is an Indian-born legal expert who has never lived in Tibet. His father fled Tibet in 1959, the same year as the Dalai Lama.
He says he will move to Dharamsala to serve as prime minister and that he supports the Dalai Lama's stance on ties with China.
"What His Holiness stands for is the 'Middle Way', which is genuine autonomy within China or within the framework of the Chinese constitution," he told the BBC earlier this month.
"If Tibetans are granted genuine autonomy then his Holiness the Dalai Lama said he is willing to accept Tibet as part of China."
Daunting task An official told Reuters news agency that that Dalai Lama was "very happy" that people "took a very active part in the election process".
The 76-year-old monk announced in March that he wanted an elected official to assume some of his responsibilities, saying that such a move was in the best interests of the Tibetan people.
Analysts say he aims to ensure that even if China's government tries to select the next Dalai Lama, the Tibetans will have an elected leader they can look to who is outside China and beyond the Communist Party's control.
The BBC's Mark Dummett says Lobsang Sangay has the daunting task of trying to keep the issue of Tibet alive while the man who embodies the struggle for Tibetan rights gradually steps back from the limelight.
He has been elected head of a government which no country recognises and will face in China an opponent which has shown no sign of wanting to compromise, our correspondent adds.
@'BBC'

Martin Luther King (kinetic typography)

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ubuweb Ubu Web

[listen] Louis Farrakhan (yeah, that one) singing Calypso about a sex change operation, from the mid-1950s: http://is.gd/5druh4

A sidenote. This record was releasd under the name 'The Charmer'.
In Arabic, charmer is 'farrakhan'.

Manning and Mohammed cases: Tilting the scales of justice

Hmmm!

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(Thanx HerrB!)

ph0n0n - Session 4

Beijing officials 'laughed off' Australian concerns

Chernobyl now

A doll and gas masks are pictured on a bed in a former kindergarten in Pripyat. All 45,000 residents of the Ukrainian city, which lay adjacent to the plant, were evacuated in the three days after the explosion. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP)
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Emotional Habib discusses release of Gitmo file

Hicks should never have been charged: former US prosecutor

Australia's former Guantanamo Bay inmate, David Hicks, should never have been charged, according to the former Chief Prosecutor at the US military prison, Colonel Morris Davis.

In the latest twist in the long-running efforts by the Bush administration to get trials up and running at Guantanamo, the former prosecutor has been called as a defence witness at a pre-trial hearing for one of the detainees.
Colonel Davis was originally a staunch supporter of the military commissions set up to try Guantanamo prisoners.
He quit the system last year shortly after Hicks was convicted, claiming there had been political interference in the cases selected for trial. Others too have left citing similar concerns, including former prosecutors Captain John Carr and Major Rob Preston in 2004.
Colonel Davis was called today to appear at Guantanamo at a hearing for the next prisoner due to stand trial, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who was allegedly Osama bin Laden's driver.
Colonel Davis' testimony comes amidst speculation that the closure of Guantanamo Bay is now a matter of time.
He told a hearing at Guantanamo today that Bush administration appointees lobbied for charges in particular cases because they would bolster public support for Guantanamo.
Colonel Davis also disapproved of the abusive techniques used to elicit evidence from prisoners.
Lawyers for detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan called Colonel Davis to appear at his hearing today, arguing that the former Chief Prosecutor's testimony is grounds for the case against Hamdan to be thrown out.
Australian David Hicks did not contest the charges against him, and since he was convicted in 2006, no other detainee has faced trial, with some now being held for more than six years without a day in court.
The Hamdan trial is set for May, though there is much discussion in national security circles in Washington that the closure of Guantanamo Bay is now inevitable. The three remaining Presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain, all say the facility should be shut down.
This raises the question of the fate of the prisoners who can't be released, including high level terrorist suspects such as Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks and Hambali, the alleged architect of the Bali bombings.
Trials in regular courts for such suspects are not possible. Any charges against them would be thrown out because of irregularities and abuses in their detention and interrogation.
Two staunch academic critics of the military commissions have floated the idea of a new National Security Court in the US, using sitting federal court judges.
Under such a system the US Government could produce classified information to argue the case for the indefinite detention of certain prisoners.
The defendants would have lawyers under the proposal, although they would have fewer rights than in regular criminal cases.
Civil libertarians oppose the idea, but it may appeal to the Bush administration or to a future President McCain, Obama or Clinton, facing the politically unpalatable and arguably strategically unwise alternative of simply freeing Guantanamo inmates.
Leigh Sales @'ABC'