Thursday, 16 February 2012

♪♫ Mark Stewart VS Primal Scream - Autonomia (Pinch's Apocalyptic Rework)

Fiddling (Shetland Isles pre. 1928)

(My BIG thanx to Edi for this pic of her Poppo!)

Via FOIA: 75MB of zipped DHS training materials on seizure and surveillance of phones. files.cloudprivacy.net/DHS-training-m…

The Afghanistan Report the Pentagon Doesn't Want You to Read

Jamdown (1981)

'Jamdown' takes you on a journey back to 1980, straight into the heart of the Jamaican reggae scene, following legendary reggae artists Toots Hibbert and The Congos. The film shot in 1980 had a limited release in France and therefore remained undiscovered by the rest of the world. Since its initial release almost 30 years ago, 'Jamdown' has become what reggae footage collectors often refer to as ''The holy grail of reggae films'' due to its rarity and difficulty in finding an original copy of the film. The film contains some of the only known early footage of The Congos, performing tracks from their legendary Heart Of The Congos LP which was produced by Lee Perry at the Black Ark studios at the height of their career. Jamdown contains some of the most electrifying live reggae footage to have ever been captured on film, making it a highly enjoyable performance for all reggae fans.

Wednesday, 15 February 2012

Future Opioids

'If we could sniff or swallow something that would, for five or six hours each day, abolish our solitude as individuals, atone us with our fellows in a glowing exaltation of affection and make life in all its aspects seem not only worth living, but divinely beautiful and significant, and if this heavenly, world-transfiguring drug were of such a kind that we could wake up next morning with a clear head and an undamaged constitution - then, it seems to me, all our problems (and not merely the one small problem of discovering a novel pleasure) would be wholly solved and earth would become paradise.'

- Aldous Huxley
HERE
Via

(Thanx trnsnd!)

:)

(Thanx David!)

The Good Drug Guide

Losing My Revolution: A year after the Egyptian Revolution, 10% of the social media documentation is gone

The Egyptian revolution on the 25th of January 2011 was unlike any other revolution in history because of the role of social media. Several blogs, Storify entries, web pages, channels on YouTube where created to document the revolution. Several books were even published documenting the 18 days. All of these contributions were made by the public, not historians, utilizing the tools of web 2.0. As a result of all these contributions we have an enormous digital content including thousands of posts, tweets, images, videos and sound files narrating and documenting the revolution. Unfortunately, at the first anniversary of this revolution over 10%
of this digital content is already gone.
Websites like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Storify, 1000Memories, Blogger and IAmJan25 have allowed the public to document the events of the revolution in real-time. Storify, for example, allows the user to create a timed organized collection of tweets, links, images, posts, map locations or videos to create a story. 1000Memories on the other hand allows the user to keep the memory of a loved one after he/she has passed away by creating collections about them including photos, notes, testimonials, videos and other mementos. Iamjan25 is a website dedicated mainly as a hub for all the videos and images about the Egyptian revolution sent to the website administrators.
It is fascinating to read the amalgamated stories assembled from the tweets, Facebook posts, links, images, videos, map-taggings, etc. from the authors who were experiencing and documenting these events as they occurred. These social media contributions could give a great insight of what happened in the revolution and feed the curiosity of the readers by making them relive those moments with the authors.
Even in the period when the Internet and cellular services were shut down people still took photos and videos which they later posted in the social networks. You can often find videos and images documenting the same incident from multiple angles which reminded me of the movie "Vantage Point"...
MORE

Turkey: Another victim in the undeclared war on transgender women

Via Kocaeli Gazetesi, Mynet Haber and Haber 27 comes the sad news of the murder on Monday afternoon (13 February 2012) of Melda Yuksel in Kocaeli, Turkey.

As I understand it, Melda - a 26-year old transgender woman - met her younger brother Murat at a building site to ask his advice on some construction work she had commissioned. It seems that a conversation after the site meeting somehow escalated into an argument between the two about sexual orientation/gender identity, during which Mr Yuksel pulled out a gun and shot Melda five times. She died of her injuries at the scene of the shooting.

Neighbours reported hearing gunfire and officers from the County Police Department were on the scene within minutes, where Mr Yuksel was taken into custody with the gun still in his possession. The police investigation continues.

As regular readers of this blog will know, I believe that murders like this are part of a larger pattern of violence and discrimination against TS/TG people in Turkey and it's disheartening to have to repeat myself yet again:

TS/TG people are human, just like cis people. We have the same civil liberties and human rights as cis people. We're just another face in the crowd, someone you pass on the street every day. And yet, time and again, we are subjected to bigotry and violence simply because we exist. But being TS/TG is not some "lifestyle choice"; it isn't something we can leave at home when we go out into the world each day. And neither is it anything for cis people to react to, not with fear, not with hatred - and especially not with violence.

Transphobia is everywhere and it's way past time that cis people understood this and began to act accordingly, to show us the same respect that they automatically demand for themselves.

The answer is in their hands, not ours.

Cis people, you have to stop the transphobic violence, and you have to stop it now.

I extend my condolences to Melda's loved ones on their sad loss of yet another victim in the apparently endless undeclared war on transgender women in Turkey.

---------------

Photo of Melda from Mynet Haber

Thanks to Kemal Ordek, Secretary General of Pembe Hayat for the heads-up

Cross-posted from Bird of Paradox