The Guns Of Brixton (Paul Simonon) limited edition print by Obey

(Thanx Stan!)

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The dark side of Syria's internet, @jilliancyork on why surveillance and spambots prove @evgenymorozov right http://goo.gl/2R1Gh

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Peter Saville on his Joy Division/New Order album cover artwork

Next month sees the release of Total, the first compilation to combine the back catalogues of Joy Division and New Order – who shared band members, a record label and a sleeve designer. Peter Saville was a co-founder of Factory Records and credits the label's unique culture for providing him with a creative freedom on a par with its bands. "I had the opportunity to make the kind of objects I wanted to see in my life," says Saville, who went on to design the England football strip, art direct adverts for Dior and was creative director of the city of Manchester. Here, he talks us through his favourite designs for Joy Division and New Order sleeves

Unknown Pleasures Joy Division (Factory, 1979)
This was the first and only time that the band gave me something that they’d like for a cover. I went to see Rob Gretton, who managed them, and he gave me a folder of material, which contained the wave image from the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy. They gave me the title too but I didn’t hear the album. The wave pattern was so appropriate. It was from CP 1919, the first pulsar, so it’s likely that the graph emanated from Jodrell Bank, which is local to Manchester and Joy Division. And it’s both technical and sensual. It’s tight, like Stephen Morris’ drumming, but it’s also fluid: lots of people think it’s a heart beat. Having the title on the front just didn’t seem necessary. I asked Rob about it and, between us, we felt it wasn’t a cool thing to do. It was the post-punk moment and we were against overblown stardom. The band didn’t want to be pop stars ...

Iranian activist dies in scuffle at her father's funeral

I Think I'm Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky is the 2011 Sydney Peace Prize winner.
He will deliver the City of Sydney Peace Prize Lecture at Sydney Town Hall 2 November.

HA!

Via
http://minibluehelmets.com/

Ratko Mladic arrival in Holland draws crowds to sleepy seaside town

Melbourne International Jazz Festival Opening Celebration Concert feat Sun Ra Arkestra

Sun Ra Arkestra (USA), Chiri featuring Bae Il Dong (KOR/AUS) and the Cairo Club Orchestra (AUS)

The Melbourne International Jazz Festival and The Light in Winter invite you to an unmissable celebration of jazz that will have you dancing into the twilight! Rain, hail or shine, the 2011 Festival officially kicks off with a free open-air concert at Federation Square.
Be sure to bring your dancing shoes as Melbourne's own sultans of debonair, the Cairo Club Orchestra, serenade in the evening's spectacular lineup of headline artists, including the awe-inspiring Chiri featuring internationally renowned Korean pansori singer Bae Il Dong performing with Australian improvising treasures drummer Simon Barker and trumpeter Scott Tinkler, followed by a special sneak peak performance by the legendary, the notorious, the groundbreaking 'tone scientists', the Sun Ra Arkestra, making their Australian premiere performance on the eve of their sold-out Festival shows.

Federation Square - Main Stage

Sat 4 June, 3–5pm
Spaceboy and I will have our dancing shoes on down the front!

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How mining and media distort Australia's carbon tax debate

Given that Australia's leader of the opposition can call human-induced climate change "crap" and still enjoy a thumping lead in the opinion polls, it's perhaps not surprising that Cate Blanchett has had to endure a flurry of non-theatrical criticism this week for fronting a pro-carbon price advertising campaign.
The pillorying of Blanchett highlights the increasingly shrill tone of an Australian media that has recently come under the iron ore-tinged influence of the country's richest person – mining magnate Gina Rinehart.
For many Australians, the first cab off the rank to attack Blanchett for supporting the Labor government's carbon price was The Bolt Report, a Sunday-morning TV show hosted by News Ltd columnist Andrew Bolt.
Bolt spent the opening portion of his weekly televisual soapbox decrying the "deceitful" Blanchett ad, labelling it "crass propaganda."
He went on to call Tim Flannery, author of a new Climate Change Commission report that warns of a one-metre rise in sea levels by the end of the century, a "long-time global warming scaremonger" before insisting that the world has not warmed for a decade.
Climate change has long been a favoured topic for Bolt in print, where he is widely read in News Ltd's Melbourne and Sydney populist tabloids. His climate change denial figurehead status was confirmed when he was made the the target of a satirical 'rap' by climate scientists.
But it's only since April that Bolt has been given the platform of a TV show, on the youth-orientated Ten Network, to espouse his climate change scepticism.
Australian media commentators have pointed to the arrival of Rinehart to Ten's board as being instrumental to Bolt's sudden rise.
Rinehart was last week crowned Australia's richest person by BRW magazine, with an estimated wealth of $10.3 billion – putting Blanchett's $53 million somewhat into the shade – and she has loosened the purse strings to become a budding, if belated, media mogul.
Rinehart splashed out $120 million to buy a 10% stake in Ten in November, taking her place alongside Lachlan Murdoch on the broadcaster's board a month later.
She swiftly followed this by doubling her stake in Fairfax, the country's second largest newspaper group, to 4% in January, tantalisingly close to the 5% share that would require her to declare her interest and expose her to questions as to her sudden interest in Australia's media.
As it is, Rinehart's public comments have been sparse, but the little she has said has been pored over by environmental groups concerned over her tightening grip on two of Australia's main media outlets.
After the Ten deal, she said in a statement: "Our company group is interested in making an investment towards the media business given its importance to the nation's future and has selected Ten Network for this investment."
Given the fevered debate over the proposed introduction of a carbon price, which has been furiously attacked by the opposition Coalition and the resources sector, there appears to be little ambiguity in the phrase "the nation's future", nor Rinehart's position in the debate.
Many Australians' enduring image of Rinehart came during the ructions caused by last year's proposed tax on the resources sector, when she clambered upon the back of a pick up truck, resplendent in pearls, to bellow "Axe the tax" during a rally.
In an opinion piece published in a mining industry magazine this month, Rinehart was more explicit over her aims, saying:

"Some mainstream media like to attack me because I speak out against a carbon tax.
"It's a pity more business executives don't speak out, because this proposal should have been dropped long ago.
"Remember when the mainstream media was running frightening commentary about carbon-induced global warming?
"We read and heard about how oceans would rise, flooding our homes, and how, over years, we'd be scorched due to the increasing heat.
"Have you noticed that we don't hear much any more about global warming?
"There will always be changes that affect our climate, even if we close down all thermal-fired power stations, steel mills and other manufacturing operations, putting employees out of work and drastically changing our way of life.
"I am yet to hear scientific evidence to satisfy me that if the very, very small amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (approximately 0.83 per cent) was increased, it could lead to significant global warming."

Rinehart chairs Hancock Prospecting, a resources company founded by her father Lang Hancock in 1952. It has significant iron ore interests in the Pilbara region of Western Australia and has embarked upon large-scale thermal coal projects in Queensland.
She has also formed Australians for Northern Development and Economic Vision, a lobby group that includes prominent geologist and climate sceptic Ian Plimer.
Aside from opposing the resources and carbon taxes, Rinehart has grumbled at how Australia "drowns" in environmental regulations and has called for an influx of cheap foreign labour to the country's sparsely populated northwest.
She even helped fund the bizarre speaking tour of climate sceptic Lord Monckton, who travelled from his Highlands estate to traverse Australia in January.
Monckton's tour saw him receive a $20,000 stipend as well as the organisational help of Rinehart's office when he arrived in Perth.
He used the tour to claim in an opinion piece for The Australian that "thoughtful" politicians were "privately, quietly" questioning conventional thinking on climate change. He is set for another trip Down Under in July.
Rinehart is not fighting a lone battle against carbon pricing. Sydney's Sunday Telegraph, which ran the now-infamous 'Carbon Cate' headline in the wake of Blanchett's ad, is representative of News Ltd titles' opposition to the tax, which critics claim will drive up energy prices and decimate Australian industry.
The increasing vitriol aimed at the Greens, which has pushed for the carbon price in return for its support of the minority Labor government, recently led to the party's leader Bob Brown labelling the Murdoch press the "hate media."
Throw into the mix a group of grumpy, but extremely popular, radio 'shock jocks' who are vehemently opposed to the carbon price and it's unsurprising that the latest polling shows only 38% of the Australian public back the plan.
Perhaps more worryingly for green groups, the proportion of people that agree that climate change is caused by human activity recently slipped below 50% for the first time. A further decline in this number will present a decent return on investment for Rinehart.
Oliver Milman @'The Guardian'