Monday, 12 September 2011
Alan McGee: I Have no Issue With PIAS but I do Hate Sony
My crime? I laughed at Sony's Enfield warehouse burning down when people were rioting. I thought it was funny then and still do now. It was during the Q&A at the conference I said I thought it was funny - all I did was tell the truth. All that shit music burned into the ether - why wouldn't I laugh?
I actually walked away from music four years ago so I was unaware PIAS (an indie) had any offices or records stored there. I have no issue with PIAS but I do however hate Sony - it's personal. So there is no apology and there is no retraction. In a 30 minute speech in Brisbane, this was a ten second comment. The British PC media had a field day that evening on that 10 second statement and as I said, my name trended on Twitter from language to language worldwide which was interesting watching it.
I now realise you don't need a police force to police you when you have liberals doing the job for them. To be clear, I am talking about people who work at the Guardian and the BBC specifically.
The Australian media to be fair are cool. They got how ridiculous it was that the British PC media had blown it up out of nothing. Me personally? I liked it. All that Twitter attention has now doubled my price for speaking engagements, so my agent has informed me, so I thank the PC police for upping my future fees.
It also shows how the world is so small through technology. A story can be massive and yet still burn out by the time I am on another plane to Tokyo two days later. It seems it was Morrissey's turn last month to be demonised and mine this month - who will the PC police turn on next?
All I can say is my ''crime'' didn't include criticism of people's sexuality, race or religion. I just thought a load of shit music getting destroyed was doing the world a favour! So there is no apology and there is no retraction. In truth, Sony and PIAS will be insured for every single unit at cost and so will get their money back on a load of CDs which were never going to sell anyway! It is all wet liberal bullshit basically. Anyway that was Australia...
Here are some thoughts:
LIFE IS A GAME, SO PLAY IT!!!!
CASUAL CURSES ARE THE MOST EFFECTIVE.
THE WORLD IS RANDOM AND CHAOS WHEN IT REIGNS IS A BEAUTIFUL THING.
EVERYTHING YOU EVER NEED TO KNOW IS ALREADY IN BOOKS. IF YOU'RE BRIGHT, FIND THEM.
@'HuffPo'
Listen: Alan McGee Responds To Sony Warehouse Fire Controversy
The Midflight Musings of a Music Svengali
Hmmm!
david leigh wrote:
Sep 10th 2011 8:13 GMT
Just to clear up a couple of factual points.
1. Yes, I understand the archive with z.gpg somewhere in it was posted by Assange or his friends in an obscure location around 7 December 2010, the day Assange was arrested for alleged sex offences. No-one told us this had been done. Assange apparently re-used the password he gave me earlier [although the file title - z.gpg - was different.]
2, Assange filmed the meeting on 4 August with Rusbridger. So the Guardian openly recorded it.
3. The relevance of that meeting is that Assange made no complaints to the Guardian whatever for publishing the password months previously. He was cordial and tried to conciliate us. Assange's present story that he had been angry for some time because of our 'security breach' is therefore a pretty obvious lie.
4. Obviously, I wish now I hadn't published the full password in the book. It would have been easy to alter, and that would have avoided all these false allegations. But I was too trusting of what Assange told me.
Via
1. Yes, I understand the archive with z.gpg somewhere in it was posted by Assange or his friends in an obscure location around 7 December 2010, the day Assange was arrested for alleged sex offences. No-one told us this had been done. Assange apparently re-used the password he gave me earlier [although the file title - z.gpg - was different.]
2, Assange filmed the meeting on 4 August with Rusbridger. So the Guardian openly recorded it.
3. The relevance of that meeting is that Assange made no complaints to the Guardian whatever for publishing the password months previously. He was cordial and tried to conciliate us. Assange's present story that he had been angry for some time because of our 'security breach' is therefore a pretty obvious lie.
4. Obviously, I wish now I hadn't published the full password in the book. It would have been easy to alter, and that would have avoided all these false allegations. But I was too trusting of what Assange told me.
Via
Sunday, 11 September 2011
Brian Eno: How has the internet changed your thinking?
Brian Eno @ German news magazine Der Spiegel:
"I notice that certain radical social experiments that even the most idealistic anarchists seem utopian, fifty years ago, had to take place now smoothly and without fanfare. These include the open-source development, shareware and freeware, Wikipedia, MoveOn and UK Citizens Online Democracy.
I notice that the power of the world is not entirely liberated in the same way as we had expected. Repressive regimes can turn it off, and can use it as liberal propaganda. On the positive side, I notice that the difference in the trustworthiness of the network has made people more skeptical about the information they receive from all other media.
It occurs to me now that I know as my patchwork of a wider range of sources digest than in the past. Also, I notice that I'm less inclined to look for through-composed, finished stories, and more prefer to make my own collage from, what I can find. What strikes me is that I read books cursory and they scan in the same manner as I scan the network - when I "bookmark" set.
It strikes me that to make the turn of the century dream of bioethicists Darryl Macer, a map of all the concepts in the world, an autonomous way is reality - in the form of the network.
It occurs to me that I communicate with more people, but less detail. It strikes me that it is possible to have confidential relationships that exist only in the net and have little or no physical components. It strikes me that it is even possible to engage in complex social projects, such as making music, without ever seeing the other employees. From the value of these changes I'm not convinced.
It occurs to me that was the idea of "community" is changing: While the term once described a certain physical and geographical ties between the people, he can now "the pursuit of common interests" mean. What strikes me is that I now belong to hundreds of communities - the community of people who are interested in active democracy, the community of people who for synthesizers, for climate change, Tommy Cooper jokes, for copyright, for A cappella singing, for speakers interested in the philosophy of pragmatism, the theory of evolution, etc..
It strikes me that the desire for community with millions of people so strongly that they belong entirely fictional communities such as Second Life and World of Warcraft. My concern is that this could work to the detriment of real life.
I notice that I have more time than before to spend with words and language - because that is the currency of the net. My note books may take longer to get full. I notice also that night I rougher the disappearance of the fax machine because it is a more personal communication tool than e-mail because it allowed drawing and handwritten letters. I notice that my mind is primarily a linguistic one, for example, compared to visual functioning is established.
It occurs to me that has changed the concept of "experts". An expert was usually "someone who had access to particular information." But now since so much information accessible to everyone equally, the notion of "experts" to "someone who can interpret the information better." The ruling has replaced the access.
I notice that I've become a slave to the network - that my e-mails several times a day look that I worry about the pile of unsolicited and unanswered emails in my inbox. It strikes me that it is difficult to find a whole morning to think without interruption. I notice that you expect from me that I will answer e-mails immediately, and that it is difficult not to do so. I notice that I am consequently impulsive.
I notice that I frequently donate money in response to calls on the Internet. I notice that "memes" are now directly spreading infections such as malignant by the vectors of the network can - and that's not always good. I notice that sometimes I'll sign petitions for things I do not really understand, and only because it is so easy. I suppose that this kind of irresponsibility is rife.
It strikes me that what pushed the network to another location in a modified form reappears. For example, musicians were usually on tour to make their records for advertising, but since vinyl records or CDs because of illegal downloads are not earned much more money they make records now, to promote her tours. Book stores, their employees are familiar with books, and familiar record stores, their employees, with music, are frequent.
It strikes me that the more the power of free or cheap versions of something provides the "authentic experience" - the unique, unmediated experience - is valued more highly. It strikes me that the authors devote more attention to those aspects of their work that can not be duplicated. The "authentic" has replaced the Reproducible.
I notice that hardly anyone has thought of us about the chaos that would result if the power would crumble.
It occurs to me that my life has changed more by my mobile phone than through the internet."
translated with Google from the original German article
Ten Years After September 11
A decade’s perspective highlights the enormous damage that the attacks of September 11, 2001 did to the human rights cause. There was, first of all, the irreparable damage of lives lost that day – some 3,000 people from many nations. Terrorism – the deliberate targeting of civilians for political ends – is an affront to the human rights movement. The values of human rights place respect for the individual at their core. Terrorism treats individuals as pawns, to be disposed of for political ends.
Suicide attacks have long been a tool for terrorists, but the magnitude of the September 11 assault spawned replication. Most people were repulsed by this killing, but enough were inspired that it contributed to an epidemic of suicide attacks on civilians in the ensuing decade. Victims multiplied in many countries. The growing willingness of some to sacrifice themselves for a cause has further complicated the defense against terrorism. And the realization that there are no limits to what terrorists might attempt made the quest to stop them all the more urgent.
Yet the damaging legacy of September 11 can also be found in the reaction. Some recognized that the best antidote to terrorism was to reaffirm the values of humanity it flouted – that the most effective way to counter the appeal of mass murder was to scrupulously respect human rights and the rule of law. Yet all too often, those leading the counterterrorism charge adopted the ends-justify-the-means logic of the terrorists. The result was a litany of practices whose names are now synonymous with blatant disregard for human rights: Guantanamo, military commissions, CIA “black sites,” water-boarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques,” extraordinary rendition to torture covered up by meaningless “diplomatic assurances,” among others.
Undertaken in the name of expediency, these abuses may have spurred more terrorist attacks. Those who deployed them lost the moral high ground, undermined trust in law-enforcement officials, and discarded lawful techniques for piercing secretive criminal enterprises that had long proved effective.
They also bred copycat responses by governments whose interest was less stopping terrorism than using the latest rhetoric of convenience to silence political opposition. Overbroad and vague anti-terrorism laws proliferated. Peaceful dissidents were labeled terrorists and detained without trial. Torture and arbitrary detention became harder to combat because “that’s what Bush did.” Many governments best placed to reverse these damaging trends were silenced by their own complicity in them – and by their tendency to welcome virtually anything said to be done in the name of fighting terrorism.
Today, there has been global progress in curtailing counterterrorism abuses, but little willingness to hold abusive officials to account. For example, saying that he would “look forward and not backwards,” President Barack Obama has decreed an end to torture by US agents but refused to prosecute those who ordered it. Nor have most governments investigated, let alone prosecuted, their own abusive officials. This failure to uphold the rule of law risks transforming torture and other serious human rights violations from blatant criminal offenses to permissible policy options.
The tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks is thus an occasion to remember its victims and to reaffirm the importance of human rights, to oppose the terrorist who kills civilians in the name of a cause and the official who “disappears” or tortures suspects in the name of fighting terrorism.
@'Human Rights Watch'
Suicide attacks have long been a tool for terrorists, but the magnitude of the September 11 assault spawned replication. Most people were repulsed by this killing, but enough were inspired that it contributed to an epidemic of suicide attacks on civilians in the ensuing decade. Victims multiplied in many countries. The growing willingness of some to sacrifice themselves for a cause has further complicated the defense against terrorism. And the realization that there are no limits to what terrorists might attempt made the quest to stop them all the more urgent.
Yet the damaging legacy of September 11 can also be found in the reaction. Some recognized that the best antidote to terrorism was to reaffirm the values of humanity it flouted – that the most effective way to counter the appeal of mass murder was to scrupulously respect human rights and the rule of law. Yet all too often, those leading the counterterrorism charge adopted the ends-justify-the-means logic of the terrorists. The result was a litany of practices whose names are now synonymous with blatant disregard for human rights: Guantanamo, military commissions, CIA “black sites,” water-boarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques,” extraordinary rendition to torture covered up by meaningless “diplomatic assurances,” among others.
Undertaken in the name of expediency, these abuses may have spurred more terrorist attacks. Those who deployed them lost the moral high ground, undermined trust in law-enforcement officials, and discarded lawful techniques for piercing secretive criminal enterprises that had long proved effective.
They also bred copycat responses by governments whose interest was less stopping terrorism than using the latest rhetoric of convenience to silence political opposition. Overbroad and vague anti-terrorism laws proliferated. Peaceful dissidents were labeled terrorists and detained without trial. Torture and arbitrary detention became harder to combat because “that’s what Bush did.” Many governments best placed to reverse these damaging trends were silenced by their own complicity in them – and by their tendency to welcome virtually anything said to be done in the name of fighting terrorism.
Today, there has been global progress in curtailing counterterrorism abuses, but little willingness to hold abusive officials to account. For example, saying that he would “look forward and not backwards,” President Barack Obama has decreed an end to torture by US agents but refused to prosecute those who ordered it. Nor have most governments investigated, let alone prosecuted, their own abusive officials. This failure to uphold the rule of law risks transforming torture and other serious human rights violations from blatant criminal offenses to permissible policy options.
The tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks is thus an occasion to remember its victims and to reaffirm the importance of human rights, to oppose the terrorist who kills civilians in the name of a cause and the official who “disappears” or tortures suspects in the name of fighting terrorism.
@'Human Rights Watch'
Hmmm!
Disgusting. Check out this ad the Recording Industry Association, the Motion Picture Association, and others just took out as they try to push their Internet censorship legislation: They think their customers should be treated like criminal suspects.
Urge Congress To Reject The PROTECT IP Act
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