Monday, 6 June 2011

An interview w/ Sophie Brous (Program Director of the 2011 Melbourne International Jazz Festival)

Transcendental Sounds

Jamie xx - Far Nearer/Beat For

♪♫ The Spicey Satanists - Ebannaw

War on drugs has also become a war on free thinking

Does A.A. Need God?

A long-standing rift in the A.A. rank and file broke into the open over the weekend as Toronto’s two atheist/agnostic Alcoholics Anonymous groups were thrown off the official city list. The Greater Toronto Area Intergroup, the local A.A. coordinating organization, voted to remove the two groups from the published directory of meetings, and from its website. The Toronto Star said the city’s two secular groups, named Beyond Belief and We Agnostics, kicked up the fuss by adopting a rewritten version of the famous Twelve Steps, removing all references to “God” that appear in Bill W.’s original version. “The name of God appears four times in the Twelve Steps,” writes the Star’s Leslie Scrivener, “and echoes the period in which they were written—the 1930s.” But rewriting the basic tenets of A.A. as preserved through the years did not sit well with many A.A. members. “They [the altered Twelve Steps] are not our Twelve Steps,” said an AA member who was at the meeting of the Intergroup that delisted the two groups. “They’ve changed them to their own personal needs.”
It's well known that A.A. dynamics vary widely, and many A.A. meetings over the years have ended with a group recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. “That has obviously stopped in all but hard-core groups, the A.A. member told the Star. “We welcome people with open arms.” We think that is the right approach, but banning the groups is an odd way to welcome them. “I’ve tried AA meetings and I couldn’t get past the influence of right-wing Christianity,” said another prospective member. Serving these drinkers is the goal of the atheist/agnostic groups.
“God as we understood him,” as it says in the Third Step, has been a stumbling block to many throughout A.A.’s 75-year history. Thinkers from Carl Jung to Gregory Bateson have seen in A.A.’s higher power not Godhead, but rather a recognition of processes beyond a single individual—the power of the many, compared to the power of one. The group itself becomes the “higher power,” in many cases. Is it time to officially admit that it's possible to be secular and sober in A.A.? Writer Joe Chisholm sent us this quote by A.A. co-founder Bill Wilson, from the A.A. Grapevine of April, 1961: “In AA’s first years I all but ruined the whole undertaking with this sort of unconscious arrogance. God as I understood Him had to be for everybody. Sometimes my aggression was subtle and sometimes it was crude. But either way it was damaging—perhaps fatally so—to numbers of non-believers.”
Here are two examples of the changes in the Twelve Steps that got Beyond Belief booted out of the Toronto A.A. circle:
Step Two: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Adapted version: Came to accept and to understand that we needed strengths beyond our awareness and resources to restore us to sanity.
Step Three: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.
Adapted version: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of the AA program.
Dirk Hanson @'The Fix'

Beyond AA: Online mag offers stories of addiction and DIY sobriety

HA!

JohnFugelsang John Fugelsang

John Edwards of N Carolina/with teeth as white as fine China/a smile that's so flirty/a hairstyle so purty/& extremely poor taste in vagina

Leon Botha/DJ Solarize RIP (1985 – 2011)

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Die Antwoord collaborator Leon Botha dies, age 26

RIP

Leon Botha

Violence Flares Up at Israeli Border

@exiledsurfer interviews Adrian Lamo

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33 ways to stay creative

(Click to enlarge)

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Martin Rushent RIP

Music producer Martin Rushent, who worked with bands including the Human League and the Stranglers has died, aged 63.

His son, James, confirmed on his Facebook and Twitter pages that his father had died on Saturday.
Rushent started as an engineer in the 1970s, working on records by T-Rex and Fleetwood Mac among others.
He produced the Human League's hit album Dare, which contained the classic "Don't You Want Me?".
The Stranglers paid tribute to him on their official website, saying: "We have just received the sad news that another early band collaborator, Martin Rushent, passed away yesterday aged 63."
Rushent produced the band's first three albums, Rattus Norvegicus, No More Heroes and Black and White.
@'BBC'
MORE

Senators Target Website That Sells Narcotics

Two U.S. senators said Sunday they will ask federal authorities to crack down on a secretive narcotics market operated on the Internet with anonymous sales and untraceable currency.
Heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines are among the drugs being sold in the well-protected website apparently operating for just a few months.
Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, both Democrats, said they asked the Justice Department and Drug Enforcement Administration to shut down and investigate the website, often referred to as the Silk Road after an ancient Asian trade route.
"This audacious website should be shut down immediately," Manchin said.
"Never before has a website so brazenly peddled illegal drugs online," Schumer said. "By cracking down on the website immediately, we can help stop these drugs from flooding our streets."
The senators planned to release their letters to the agencies on Sunday.
A key to the illicit trade is use of a network by buyers and sellers that conceals their identity. Websites including Gawker have reported on the site.
Schumer said the website began operating in February and uses "layers" of secrecy to thwart authorities. Sellers are told to make shipments in vacuum-sealed bags to avoid drug-detecting dogs.
@'npr'