Saturday, 6 October 2012

Cooking with Christopher Walken

The Century Of The Self (2002)

The Century Of The Self is an award-winning British television documentary series by Adam Curtis. It focuses on how the work of Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, and Edward Bernays influenced the way corporations and governments have analyzed,‭ dealt with, and controlled ‬people.
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HA!

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(Thanx Walter!)

Julian Assange: No longer true, just red, white and blue

For over a decade now, governments around the world having been doing all they can to reduce scrutiny over the exercise of their power. Countries like China and Iran are rightly criticised for their attempts to suppress dissenting voices online. But the US, supposedly the land of the free, has a similarly poor track record.
President Obama has been waging a war on whistleblowers from the Oval Office, the most obvious example being the mistreatment of Bradley Manning. The Obama-Biden campaign brags about prosecuting twice as many "national security" disclosures as all previous administrations combined. There have also been sustained attacks on my organisation, WikiLeaks, via a financial blockade of donations enforced with the support of the US government.
Most disturbingly, WikiLeaks has been warned by the Pentagon not to solicit service members to leak classified information. Military personnel who make contact with WikiLeaks or our supporters could be charged with "communicating with the enemy," a crime that carries a possible death sentence. The Pentagon has also stated this month that it considers the continued publication by WikiLeaks of classified information belonging to the US government to be an ongoing violation of the law.
This sets a precedent: contact by military whistleblowers to any media organization may soon be treated with similar hostility.
But these attacks are not just directed at whistleblowers and those that publish their information for the public to see. Governments in the UK, the US and Australia are seeking to extend already extreme powers of surveillance so they can gather intelligence on their citizens.
Under proposed changes to national security laws, the Australian government will force Internet service providers to retain the internet and phone records of all Australians for two years. Some agencies are demanding even more extreme powers to keep a full record of citizens activities indefinitely. Such extremism will in effect be the reality: the proposed laws require the creation of a nation-wide infrastructure that is capable of intercepting all communications.
Every email, every Facebook post, every tweet, every google search will pass through this database and portions will be stored and could be used against you at some point down the track.
A nation wide mass interception infrastructure is a national security disaster waiting to happen. Of course, the changes to the law promised at the last election to protect whistleblowers have fallen off the legislative agenda.
These are significant expansions of government power without justification and without any checks and balances to ensure that the rights of everyday people are respected. There is no way of knowing how this or future governments will use such power. Australians deserve to know what is being done in their name.
Technology offers us incredible opportunities to share information, spread ideas and collaborate across geographical divides. It has the potential to shine a light on wrong-doing, correct injustice and empower those without a voice. The freedom to use such platforms must be safely defended, lest it become simply a place for the government to spy on its population.
The power given to governments to govern, after all, derives from the mandate given by the people. Technology should be about empowering citizens and giving expression to the inner core of our public and private political lives. This is a prospect that makes the powers that be very uncomfortable.
When an organisation like WikiLeaks shows the emperor with no clothes on, predictably every attempt is made to undermine us. The Prime Minister has never retracted the comment she made about WikiLeaks being based on an illegal act. By her own Governments admission, such an accusation is unsustainable. It is untrue and should be retracted.
The Australian Government has turned its back on one of its citizens, in order to avoid offending the US, and has repeatedly lied about its support for me. Ecuador, after careful and lengthy consideration of the evidence, concluded that I had a well-founded fear of persecution and that I could not rely on my own government to protect me.
It is bitterly disappointing that the country that I love has abandoned my organisation. WikiLeaks is an Australian organisation and an Australian success story and yet the Australian Government has done nothing to defend us. Quite the contrary. It has slandered us in public during a time when we face significant risks.
For me personally, it is difficult and in some cases impossible to see my family and friends. I have been unable to be with them in recent moments of family grief.
I want nothing more than to do my work in peace. I began my career as someone who understood the importance of exposing corruption and wrong doing. I am now a publisher who faces persecution for doing my job. It is the duty of publishers to fearlessly publish the truth and the duty of all good citizens to defend their right to do so.
It is time for Australia to embrace a different path: to reject campaigns of harassment and intimidation against publishers, journalists and whistleblowers. We must demand that our government abandon efforts to impose a surveillance state on its citizens. We deserve a government that protects its citizens no matter whom they have offended or embarrassed. We have the opportunity to build a democracy that welcomes transparency and the more just, humane and responsive government that it brings.
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What do fruits and vegetables look like inside an MRI?

Sunflower

Tomato

Garlic
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Flowered Up - Weekender

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William S. Burroughs: 23 Skidoo Eristic Elite (1967)

International Times #18
Words HERE

♪♫ Television - Foxhole (OGWT 1978)

For those interested in old/rare Television/Tom V. articles, Youtoober Bobjb999 has created a link to a file of scans of approx. 60 articles/interviews (most contain interview content):
http://www.4shared.com/zip/p6aGwLm6/Tom_Verlaine_Television_etc_Ar.html
Collected between 1978 & 1990, & the articles date from '74 to '90. The Wonder fan site has an excellent articles collection (mostly text files), but many of these articles aren't yet available there. Also, here's a link to a file of scans of 'The Night', a poetry book(let) by Tom Verlaine & Patti Smith, published 1976. The book was called The Night reportedly at least partly 'cause Tom & Patti wrote all the poems in one night. Even numbered poems are by Tom, odd numbered by Patti. Patti consciously relates the book to French poet Arthur Rimbaud and from memory the font used was the same as an early Rimbaud book. My thanx to friend of Exile Kaggsy who scanned her copy for me a while ago as I had long lost mine.
http://www.4shared.com/zip/eM4vfO6L/The_Night_Tom_Verlaine__Patti_.html

Now if anyone can hook me up with a complete copy of this tape or Richard Hell's article about David Johansen from Hit Parader from about 1975 which from memory was nothing less than Hell's rock'n'roll manifesto.

Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison of The Velvet Underground play backstage at Café Bizarre in New York (1965)

Photo: Adam Ritchie
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Smile

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Richard Hell & Patty Oldenberg (c.1970)

Richard Hell. The letter on Genesis : Grasp letterhead is dated July 2, 1969. Genesis : Grasp was a small press poetry magazine and press edited by Richard Meyers (Hell’s given name) and poet David Giannini.

Photograph: Bevan Davies
Patty met Richard and “Tommy Miller,” the future Tom Verlaine at the artist’s bar, St. Adrian’s at the Broadway Central Hotel in early 1969. Richard was 19, Patty was about to turn 35, and they were soon living together. It was an important time and an important relationship for both. Richard has written: “The two and a half years from early 1969 through summer/fall 1971 that began when I met Patty and ended with the composition of Wanna Go Out? (a set of collaborative poems written by Tom [Verlaine] and me in the persona of a despairing, faux-vicious hooker named Theresa Stern) were probably my most formative.” Patty and Richard continue to be friends in regular contact with one another.
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