Saturday, 3 September 2011
Sony warehouse robbed by 'professional gang' hours before fire, say new reports
The Daily Telegraph reports that the Sony DADC distribution centre was deliberately targeted by a professional gang, who arrived with specialist cutting equipment and spent up to two hours dismantling a high security fence before breaking in.
The paper's sources indicate that a fleet of vans then arrived and began to load up part of the contents of the warehouse, which also held Sony's more conventional stock like Playstations and televisions. They were able to do this after overwhelming the onsite security staff, who were unable to get police back up, as they were already overstretched in combatting ongoing disturbances across the UK capital.
After completing the robbery, the gang is thought to have invited other gangs in to continue the looting in an attempt to cover their tracks. They then left the premises. The fire allegedly broke out hours laters.
So far, five people have been arrested in connection with the break-in and fire. Two 17-year-old boys and men aged 18, 22 and 23 have been questioned over charges of looting and arson.
Stock from over 150 independent record labels, including XL, Domino and Sunday Best was lost in the blaze, with many labels still facing an uncertain future as a result of the fire.
@'NME'
WikiLeaks Editor Julian Assange Could Face Arrest in Australia
A question: Are the ASIO agents names printed in the Australian 'Government Gazette'?
The United States of Chris Mitchell: The Power of Rupert Murdoch and the Australian’s Editor-in-Chief
Talk to any journalist, commentator, politician or public figure in Australia, and it seems they all have a view of Chris Mitchell, editor-in-chief of the Australian newspaper, now widely regarded as the most influential news outlet in the country – one that polarises readers and infuriates targets with its relentless crusading journalism.
Visionary. Zealot. Grenade thrower. The last of the great newspaper men. Arch Machiavellian brute – this from Mitchell himself, delivered tongue-in-cheek, and for the purpose of denying it.
If there is one thing his detractors and admirers largely agree on, though, it is that Mitchell has styled himself as the most powerful media executive in the land and transformed Rupert Murdoch’s flagship into a journal whose political impact far outweighs its modest circulation of 130,000 on a weekday.
“The biggest story in politics at the moment is the relationship between News Limited and the government,” a veteran Canberra-watcher says. According to a News Limited insider, “Mitchell has inculcated a view [at the newspaper] that they are there not only to critique and oversee the government, [but also that] it is their role to dictate policy shifts, that they are the true Opposition.” An angry cabinet minister fumed recently, “The Oz doesn’t report the policy issues. It just reports that big business is shitting on the government, and Abbott is shitting on the government, it reports politics in any way that shits on the government, day after day.” Whether it’s climate change, asylum seekers, industrial relations, the schools building program or the National Broadband Network: “It’s just ‘let’s shit on the government’, every single fucking day.”
Chris Mitchell once told a colleague, “You have to understand – this is a dictatorship and I am the dictator.”
So who is the strongman at the helm of Australia’s national broadsheet? And have he and his paper overreached the proper role of the fourth estate in holding governments to account..?
Continue reading
Sally Neigbour @'The Monthly'
First Listen: Wild Flag - 'Wild Flag'
Let's look back, past the swirling cloud of expectation that has subsequently gathered around the first full-length recording by said "supergroup," and focus on that statement. Out Sept. 13, Wild Flag the album sounds more than anything like the work of four people who need music. People who, after more than two decades of playing, still need it as much as they did the day they started.
A lot of the album, in one way or another, is about music: the way it pulls you into the moment, the way it moves and seduces, the way it communicates across barriers of space, time, and language. "We love the sound, the sound is what found us / Sound is the blood between me and you," they sing in the indelible chorus of "Romance."
When they're not singing out loud, Brownstein and Timony's guitars speak volumes: They're two of the most wonderfully lyrical players out there. Add Weiss' exuberant beats, Cole's keyboard flourishes, and some killer multi-part vocal harmonizing by all four, and you've got a supergroup superball sound that bounces between Television, Wire, and The Go-Gos but always lands in a place very much their own.
The album is a no-frills affair, recorded live (except for the vocals) in The Hangar, a cavernous Sacramento recording studio that occasionally doubles as a skate park. It sounds live, as hard to imagine as that is: a real live record with a beating heart, a record that needs you as much as you need it.
Rachel Smith @'npr'
Hear 'Wild Flag' In Its Entirety
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