The Osama bin Laden exception

U.S. tries to assassinate U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki

Not far from the White House, the Capitol, and the National Mall lies a part of Washington, DC that the tourists never see and the mainstream media virtually ignores. At least three percent of DC is HIV positive, a staggering rate higher than parts of Africa. Behind all the stories of heartbreak, loss, and struggle there are also the incredible, encouraging stories of the people behind grassroots movements to extend education, combat stigmas, and spread hope.
Festival alum Susan Koch's (Kicking It, TFF '08) eye-opening and inspiring documentary tells the unseen and unheard stories behind the epidemic in our nation's capital. From a mother of three who has used her plight with government housing as motivation to campaign for reform, to a former drug addict now advocating for funding of needle exchange programs on Capitol Hill, to the self-described "privileged" young people volunteering at Joseph's House shelter, Koch smartly fixes on the positivity fueling these grassroots movements to remind us that the only unsolvable problems in this country are the ignored ones.
For more information, check out http://www.tribecafilm.com/
(Thanx Fifi!)

Franklin De Costa - Process part 250

Download

Note: Many of the tracks are edited in arrangement and with additional production.
01. John Carpenter & Alan Howarth – Arrival At The Library
02. Darkstar – Ostkreuz
03. Emeralds – The Cycle Of Abuse
04. Cluster – Fotschi Tong
05. Actress – Maze
06. Darkstar – Videotape
07. These New Puritans – Time Xone
08. The Black Dog – Delay 9
09. Autechre – Yuop-Snook
10. Lukid – Child Of The Jago
11. Lone – The Twilight Switch
12. Teebs – Humming Birds
13. Coil – 5-Methoxy-N, N-Dimethyltryptamine: (5-MeO-DMT)
14. Hauschka – Nadelwald
15. Broken Social Scene – Never Felt Alive
16. Bvdub – The Past Disappears
17. Toro Y Moi – Fax Shadow
18. Memory Tapes – Run Out
19. Phonophani – C
20. Oneohtrix Point Never – Ouroboros

Beats In Space: Trentemøller

1. Kid Kongo And The Yellow Monkey Birds - La Lliarona
2. Suicide - Touch Me (Trentemøller Edit)
3. Chimes & Bells - The Mole (Trentemøller Remix)
4. Trickski - Pill Collins (Trentemøller Edit)
5. Nursery -
6. Jarvis Cocker - You're In My Eyes (Disco Song) Pilooski Remix
7. Nick Cave - (Trentemøller Edit)
8. Khan - Ride My Pony
9. Bruce Springsteen - State Trooper (Trentemøller Edit)
10. Crash Course In Science - Flying Turns (Trentemøller Edit)
11. - Lose Yourself
12. Oh No Ono's - Eleanor Speaks (Caribou Remix)
13. - Destroy Yourself
14. The Presets - Kiddie In The Middle
15. Kim Ann Foxman - Creature
16. Wild Nothing - Chinatown
17. The Warlocks -
18. Warpaint - Ashes To Ashes
19. Joakim - Come Into My Kitchen (Trentemøller Edit)

Download
Via

Vivian Goldman: Poly Styrene, Lost & Found

Besieged, Not Fallen

Do you know what happened to terrorists who bombed the Islamabad Marriott Hotel back in 2008, several months before the attacks on Mumbai? The same thing that has happened to the planners, financiers and key actors involved in Mumbai. Nothing much.
How about the killers of Benazir Bhutto, a woman who brought out an entire nation to vote her into power not once, but twice? Do you know what happened to them? Or the murderers of Shahbaz Bhatti? Or, the killers of dozens of Pakhtun leaders from the tribal areas and Swat? Or, going further back, the people who killed General Zia ul Haq? How about the killers of Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan’s first Prime Minister? Do you know what happened to any of these murderers?
Nothing much.
In December 2009, terrorists attacked Parade Lane mosque in Rawalpindi, on a Friday, during the weekly congregational prayer. In attendance were serving and retired officers and their families. Among the more than three dozen dead were children, a retired general, and a young man who was visiting Pakistan for his wedding.
The Parade Lane attack took place several weeks after the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Pakistan Army had already been attacked in October 2009, and held hostage, by 10 terrorists for 22 hours. The same GHQ that owns the rights to the world’s fastest-growing nuclear arsenal and the world’s sixth largest military.
Not all the terrorists who attacked the military directly got away. But most did. Suicide bombers have struck ISI (Inter Services Intelligence) targets in Lahore, Faisalabad and Peshawar, and the Special Services Group commando headquarters in Tarbela. Pakistani Frontier Constabulary men have been kidnapped and taken prisoner by Tehrik-e-Taliban terrorists in the tribal areas multiple times. Not much has happened to the perpetrators.
What is the purpose of detailing a litany of terror events in Pakistan? It is to assemble some facts. In the aftermath of Osama bin Laden’s killing in Abbottabad on 1 May, facts seem either in short supply, or in such a severe state of fragility that their status as ‘facts’ becomes hard to believe...

Continue reading

Mosharraf Zaidi @'Open'

'This is where you start the movie...'

What Have 4000 Years of Hallucinations Taught Us?

About sixty years ago the scientist C.H.W. Horne wrote that "it is remarkable that one characteristic which seems to separate man from the allegedly lower animals is a recurring desire to escape from reality." He was referring to the widespread use of hallucinogens by young people during the middle of the last century. What is even more remarkable, in my opinion, is how long humans have been documenting their interest in the use of hallucinogens. Cultural and religious rituals developed around the use of these hallucinogens probably as soon as they were discovered in the various plants and fungi that were present in their environment.
Imagine that the year is 2000 BCE (before the current era) and as you are foraging for something safe to eat you discover a small yellowish mushroom that would one day be called Psilocybe mexicana. We now realize that this mushroom contains a hallucinogen called psilocybin. Indeed, psilocybin would ultimately be discovered in at least 75 different species of mushrooms, so there was a good chance that someone, one day would have stumbled onto a mushroom containing it. Regardless, today is your lucky day - you discovered it first...

Continue reading

Gary L. Wenk @'Psychology Today'

There’s No Data Sheriff on the Wild Web

Will Self asks 'Is the internet inherently psychotic?'

Adam Curtis: Have computers taken away our power?

Heaven and Earth: Musical Pioneer John Martyn’s Last Sonic Testament

When the late British musical icon John Martyn sat down at the keys, veteran music producer and good friend Jim Tullio sighed. Martyn, an innovative guitarist and singer, had just finished a suite for the London National Ballet Company, which Tullio was mixing, but insisted he needed to lay down a keyboard part. Tullio prepared for hours of noodling, but Martyn made one pass and left. As Tullio incorporated the track into the mix, he was blown away.
“It worked perfectly,” Tullio recalls. “I learned a lesson then, to trust his instincts. John was a genius. He made music more naturally than anyone I’ve ever met, as effortlessly as the way you and I speak.”
Tullio is not alone in his assessment. Martyn, a cult-status musician’s musician, was admired by everyone from Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page to Lee “Scratch” Perry and Bob Marley. Martyn’s groundbreaking guitar technique, tape delay, and recording approaches inspired Brian Eno’s ambient sound and The Edge’s shimmering, delay-drenched strings. He was lionized by Bristol trip-hoppers and chill-out DJs.
After Martyn’s passing in early 2009, Tullio and co-producer Gary Pollitt put Martyn’s last musical testament in order, transforming rough-edged vocals, expansive takes, and complex guitar work into Heaven and Earth (Hole in the Rain; May 3, 2011). Martyn’s voice and striking songs reveal the depth and perception of a musical elder, with his signature grit and sprawling panache.
Several close friends and long-time musical collaborators—including Phil Collins—contributed elements to Heaven and Earth. But the heart of the album—felt on tracks like “Gambler” and “Bad Company”—beats in Martyn’s intuitive, idiosyncratic sense of the blues, filtered through his earthy feel for roots- and jazz-inspired songwriting and his raw voice.
Sounds like: the gritty yet sparkling last word from a neglected music legend who transformed rock, reggae, club music, and folk.
“John didn’t think about much until he was there doing it. Making music was a spontaneous process, not preconceived. He had a cool vibe,” reflects Tullio, a longtime fan and musical collaborator. They first met in Martyn’s native Scotland, thanks to a colleague from the band Supertramp. “We stopped in this village behind a church and knocked on a cottage door,” Tullio remembers. “And there was John. My friend had set it up and surprised me.”
Before long, Tullio became Martyn’s American connection, reuniting Martyn with old friends like Levon Helm of The Band (whom Martyn met during a late-60s sojourn in Woodstock) and working on several of Martyn’s albums and composition projects. Martyn hung out for months at Tullio’s home and studio in Chicago, making music and becoming practically part of the family. “The personal and musical weren’t separate for John, as they aren’t for most brilliant artists,” Tullio notes.
The personal was complex, and involved a tragic addiction to drink. Martyn lost a leg to alcohol poisoning, yet continued recording, performing, and pushing his music in new directions. An admirer of Pharaoh Sanders for decades, Martyn had a project with Sanders scheduled for early in 2009. But illness took him first.
Tullio and Gary Pollitt, felt they owed it to their friend to put together the pieces of his last works. Tullio had first-hand experience with weaving together the recordings of a talented musician who died before his time, having crafted a Grammy®-winning final record by Steve Goodman (of “City of New Orleans” fame).
His experience didn’t make the labor of love before him any easier emotionally, though he and Pollitt shared a sense of how Martyn approached arrangements and of how best to honor his memory.
“We didn’t do any editing. A lot of the tracks are long—even rambling—but we left them that way, as John last heard them,” explains Tullio. “We knew this was it, so we made a conscious decision to keep everything, every morsel.”
In addition to instrumental tracks and backing vocals by some of Martyn’s favorite backup singers, Phil Collins, a close friend and avid supporter of Martyn’s, sang background vocals on his song “Can’t Turn Back The Years.” Martyn covered Collins’s song, in part as a tribute to their bond, forged as the two men were both grappling with divorce in 1980. (Martyn crashed at Collins’s home for a spell.)
“John wanted to do one of Phil’s songs to repay him,” said Tullio. “After John passed, I spoke with Phil and he really wanted to sing on the track. He said he had always wanted John to record one of his songs. You can hear the emotion in both their voices.” It’s a haunting feeling that pervades all of Heaven and Earth.
Via

You can listen to a couple of tracks at the link above. Sounds pretty good to me...