Tuesday, 21 July 2009

Aung San Suu Kyi by Shepard Fairey

Most heard opinion why Obama won the presidential election last year is because of the effective use of social media. True. But also very important was the Hope-poster made by Shepard Fairey. How a piece of design went viral. Now Shepard Fairey made new stunning work portraiting imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi from Burma. “This Human Rights cause is something I believe in strongly,” said Fairey. “I created this portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi to raise awareness of her on-going house arrest and the oppressive nature of the military regime ruling Burma.”

Full story @ 'osocio'

3 public service announcements of the future

"...breast milk, Kahluha, love it!"

A killer blog...

A really great blog that I have just discovered:
'Killed In Cars'
A treasure trove of music, some that I have never even heard of!
Tonight I downloaded four or five albums purely on the recommendation of this blog after I found it while I was looking for some 'Basic Channel' tunes...
What can I say apart from check it out and take a chance on something you don't know about and maybe you will get blown away like I did by this album.

Beat bongo babe

Ahmahdinejad's pick for VP bows out after three days

Mashaie’s appointment came under harsh criticism by the conservatives, normally allies of Ahmadinejad. They objected to a remark he had made last year saying the Israeli people were friends of the Iranians. The appearance of nepotism (Mashaie’s daughter is married to Ahmadinejad’s son) also did not help his case. [...] The last thing he needed was being attacked by Shaiatmadari and the conservatives on the very first appointment to his new cabinet. He should have expected the reaction from the right to this nomination, but it seems that he may be loosing touch with the realities on the ground.

Adam Yauch's announcement re: his cancer (I wish you a healthy recovery mate!)

Robots invading vintage postcards



Basij shoot to kill (undated video)

Natalia Estemirova: UPDATE

I just received this email from Rosa @ Newsy.com

Hi Mona,
I read your memorial post about human rights activist Natalya Estemirova where you report about her kidnapping and brutal murder. I think you will find the following video relevant to your post.

http://www.newsy.com/videos/fighting_for_human_rights_with_life

It describes Estemirova’s life’s work and uses news coverage from different media outlets to make the case that the human rights worker was murdered by the state.
I think it is relevant to your post and I hope you will consider embedding the video in Exile on Moan Street. This story has been buried in the press and blogs like yours honor her memory by publicizing her cause.
Newsy.com videos analyze and synthesize news coverage of important global issues from multiple sources. Its unique method of presenting how different media outlets around the world are covering a story provides context to help viewers understand complex global issues.

Thanx Rosa for sending me the link and if some more people get to know of Natalia's story then I am glad to have been of help.

Here is the video:


WTF?

Is this the man who killed Neda?




Arash Hejazi (the Doctor and eyewitness of Neda dying, the guy who was trying to help her in video) a few days after had an interview with BBC. People in the street went to the guy who shot Neda and took his ID cards, he said. He added “it is possible to recognize the killer if someone publishes that ID cards.”
A few weeks later, the above pictures have surfaced on the net tho'nobody could confirm if those belonged to the killer.
Now Dr. Arash Hejazi says at his blog that we have the right man and that this IS is the killer.

Watch the video here.

Green Brief 32

Doug Wimbish - Doug Jam (1990)

Doug Wimbish, solo bass in Southern Studios 1990.
From the forthcoming On-U Sound documentary.
Brendan - this is what I was talking about!

The Last of Heath

"When Heath Ledger died a year and a half ago from an accidental mix of prescription drugs, he was deep into filming The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus with his friend and mentor, director Terry Gilliam. From Gilliam, the crew, and other insiders, the author gets an exclusive account of Ledger’s final months—a pressure cooker of arduous filmmaking, personal turmoil, and chronic insomnia—and of how the 28-year-old star’s last movie was rescued by a trio of friends: Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell."

Rolling Stones - Australian Tour Documentary 1973 (ABC)



Monday, 20 July 2009

Method of Defiance - Nihon (DVD)






Laswell Licata Kondo Worrell Dr. Israel

Lee Scratch Perry with Dubblestandart and Ari Up | NYC @ BRKLYN YARD 18 Jul 2009

One day before his huge Summerstage appearance at New York City's Central Park, Lee Scratch Perry played a secret show in Brooklyn at the BRKLYN YARD. Billed as Dubblestandart plus very special guest the Austria/Jamaica connection was joined by Ari Up of The Slits for the final encore, Equal Rights & Justice.
For a longer edit in higher resolution please go here.

Smoking # 25

Girlz With Gunz # 68

(Thanx to the 'Lochster')

Sleater - Kinney

'Jumpers' Live on Letterman.

'You're No Rock'n'Roll Fun'

One of the best live bands I have ever seen...sadly missed.

Too true

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED THE
1930's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!


First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they
carried us.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.
Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored
lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we
rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter real ice cream and drank Coca Cola with sugar in it, but
we weren't overweight because

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on (if there were streetlights)

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down
the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays,
made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!

Team sports were compulsory and not everyone made the first team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned

HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!


And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS!



You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!

ME NEED!!!

ME NEED!!!

Lego Darth Vader Canteen Incident

(Via 'Coisas do Arco da Velha')
Sketch by Eddie Izzard - fugn hilarious!

"Sense and Sensibility...and Sea Monsters"


Following on from 'Pride & Prejudice and Zombies' comes the new classic. Available September 15th.
Details here.

For A - who just doesn't get it..."Why?"

Thirty-six army officers arrested in Iran over protest plan

Hashemi Rafsanjani at Friday prayers under the pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini, left, and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Photograph: Meisam Hosseini/AP

The Iranian army has arrested 36 officers who planned to attend last week's Friday prayer sermon by former president Hashemi Rafsanjani in their military uniforms as an act of political defiance, according to Farsi-language websites.

The officers intended the gesture to show solidarity with the demonstrations against last month's presidential election result, which was won by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but which has been clouded by allegations of mass fraud.

Rafsanjani used the sermon at Tehran university to challenge the authority of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, by questioning the result in the presence of the defeated reformist candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, and tens of thousands of his supporters.

Security forces used teargas and arrested dozens of those in attendance in a sign of the authorities' nervousness over the event.

The officers were rounded up on Friday morning by army intelligence agents who had caught wind of the plan. They are said to have been arrested at their homes and taken to an unknown location.

Peiknet, a Farsi website, said the officers had agreed the action at a weekly prayer meeting the night before at the Shah Abdolazim religious shrine in Shahr-e Rey, on Tehran's southern outskirts. "They decided to attend the Friday prayer in their military clothes as a sign of protest against the cruel massacre of people by the basij and revolutionary guards and to show their objection against this process and support for the people," the site said. It named 24 of the officers, who included two majors, four captains, eight lieutenants, six sergeants and four warrant officers.

The arrests expose the authorities' sensitivity to signs of mutiny among the various branches of the security forces.

Reports last month suggested that a senior revolutionary guard commander, General Ali Fazli, had been arrested for refusing to obey orders to suppress protests against election result. The reports were later denied but some sources say Fazli remains under pressure to toe the line.

While the army is considered to be secondary in importance to the revolutionary guards in the regime's military hierarchy, it is still under the command of Khamenei, who yesterday appointed a cleric, Hojatoleslam Mohammad Ali Al-e Hashem, as the new head of its political ideology section.

Khamenei has declared the election result fair and overseen a fierce crackdown that has led to at least 2,000 arrests and a death toll the government puts at 20 but which some human rights groups say could be in the hundreds.
@ 'The Guardian'

Oh dear! Part 4 (but it really should be so much more...)


Pat Buchanan's infamous appearance on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show discussing the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor.

"Buchanan is right. This white man is full of resentment."
(@ 'Daily Kos' via 'The New Disease')

Frank McCourt RIP

Francis "Frank" McCourt
(19 August 1930 - 19 July 2009)

Jeez, I am getting old. Was it really 40 years ago today?


Lots of audio and video files relating to the Apollo 11 landing on the moon, can be found
here.

I was a wee 9 year old kid down from Glasgow staying with some friends of my Mum's in Crystal Palace, London and I am sure that the film that they showed on TV before the landing was 'Tora! Tora! Tora!'

Sunday, 19 July 2009

Black Vinyl: Putting Healthcare on the Map

... [Poets] appeal to the reader to catch the writer's spirit, to think with him, if one can or will, an expression no longer of fact but of his sense of it, his peculiar intuition of a world - prospective or discerned below the faulty conditions of the present... - Walter Pater

We excel in creating arbitrary lines on maps; delineating countless villages, towns, cities, counties, states, and nations from one another. These arbitrary lines exert influences on our lives subtle or great. For many they are the difference between life and death.

An unseen ruler
Defines with geometry
An unrulable
Expanse of geography
An aerial photographer
Over-exposed
To the cartologist's 2D
Images knows
The areas where the water flowed
So petrified the landscape grows

Children die everyday in America, the richest nation on earth, for lack of healthcare. Some of these kids live just a few dozens of miles from Canada - a place with national healthcare. The difference is even greater comparing Mexico to the United States. San Diego is just twenty miles from Tijuana, but the arbitrary line that divides the lives of their respective citizens is of unimaginable consequence. Even within nations arbitrary lines determine our lives - from the schools we attend to the doctors we see to the politicians that represent us.

Straining eyes try to understand
The works
Incessantly in hand
The carving and the paring of the land
The quarter-square the graph divides
Beneath the rule a country hides

Wire, a British art-punk band from the 1970's, wrote a song that doesn't directly address this issue, but that I've always associated with it, Map Ref. 41°N 93°W, from their album 154 released in 1979.

Chorus, interrupting my train of thought
Lines
Of longitude and latitude
Define, refine
My altitude

Perhaps the reason is because poetry is not dead, but is visible most prominently today in song lyrics. And, as postulated by Walter Pater, the poet creates a sense of an idea and doesn't have to spell it out exactly. Ambiguity, metaphor, interpretation: I choose to interpret this as a song about arbitrary lines on the map.

The curtain's undrawn
Harness fitted, no escape
Common and peaceful, duck, flat, lowland
Landscape, canal, canard, water-coloured
Crystal palaces
For floral kings
A well-known waving
Span of wings
Witness, the sinking of the sun
A deep breath of submission has begun

Of course I’ll never understand why the song’s title has map coordinates that point suspiciously close to Des Moines, Iowa.

Interrupting my train of thought
Lines
Of longitude and latitude
Define, refine
My altitude

Songwriting credits go to Colin Newman, Bruce Gilbert, and Graham Lewis of Wire. As always, lyrics are as I hear them after repeated listenings.

Kidz party mix # 1 - The Muppet Mashups

The other day the Spacebubs accompanied me on an outing around his local op-shops...and well instead of looking around the CD's and books like I usually do, we just ended up dancing in front of the radio instead.
Of course the music (commercial radio station whatever) was crap so...
Here is the answer:

The editorial team here at 'Exile' are off to a party...

'J. SPACEBUB'S 2ND ANNUAL BIFFDAY BASH!'

To get you in the mood, I leave you with this:


Saturday, 18 July 2009

Banksy in Africa


“Although believed to have been painted at the start of the year, images of Banksy’s street pieces in Africa are only now beginning to circulate. These great pieces are thought to be in Mali.”

Brilliant!!!

YES!
THEY HAVE DONE IT AGAIN!
THE BEST IDEA (ALMOST) EVER
(AT LEAST UNTIL THE NEXT ONE)
WHO? WHAT? WHERE?

HERE!

(Hi guys...)

Dead Weather play a small dark room for the privileged few



Report @ 'The Fader'

Skratch Bastid - I Got You (I Feel Good) James Brown


Free 110% mix here.

Shaolin Grand Master Tai Djin

Tai Djin was born in Fukien, China in 1849. His parents, not knowing what caused their baby’s hairiness, abandoned him in a forest. Tai was found by a monk who took him to the Shaolin Temple where he was cared for by the Shaolin Masters. Tai grew up to be highly educated, knowing he wouldn’t have much of a life outside the temple. He threw himself into learning martial arts -not just one discipline, but all of them! Tai achieved the title of Grand Master and is known from that point on as Su Kong Tai Djin. He was revered by his many students until (and even after) his death in 1928.
(At 'Mental Floss' via 'Daily Dish')

On the streets of Tehran yesterday...

Using Legos to repair building cracks

@ Urban Prankster
Love it! But then one of the highlights of my life was going to 'Lego Land' in Denmark when I was a kid!

Walter Cronkite RIP

(November 4, 1916 - July 17, 2009)
'NYTimes' obituary
Here.

پرتاب گاز اشک آور بین صفوف نماز جمعه