Anti-opium illustration c 1930

Via 'Mogadonia' via 'Steve Chasmar @ Flickr'

Going, Going, Gone

How many 'patriots' could do this?

Senator Al Franken draws a map of all 50 states from memory during an appearance on Minnesota Public Radio's Midday at the Minnesota State Fair.

Damien Hirst is just such a (humourless) twat!

@ 'Boing Boing'

MRI sex

The Boy Who Heard Too Much

It began, as it always did, with a phone call to 911. "Now listen here," the caller demanded, his voice frantic. "I've got two people here held hostage, all right? Now, you know what happens to people that are held hostage? It's not like on the movies or nothing, you understand that?"

"OK," the 911 operator said.
"One of them here's name is Danielle, and her father," the caller continued. "And the reason why I'm doing this is because her father raped my sister."
The caller, who identified himself as John Defanno, said that he had the 18-year-old Danielle and her dad tied up in their home in Security, a suburb of Colorado Springs. He'd beaten the father with his gun. "He's bleeding profusely," Defanno warned. "I am armed, I do have a pistol. If any cops come in this house with any guns, I will fucking shoot them. I better get some help here, because I'm going fucking psycho right now."
The 911 operator tried to keep him on the line, but Defanno cut the call short. "I'm not talking anymore," he snapped. "You have the address. If I don't have help here now, in the next five minutes, I swear to fucking God, I will shoot these people." Then the line went dead.
Officers raced to the house, ready for an armed standoff with a homicidal suspect. But when they arrived, they found no gunman, no hostages, no blood. Danielle and her father were safe and sound at home — alone. They had never heard of John Defanno, for good reason: He didn't exist.

@ 'Rolling Stone'

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama Back to School Event Arlington, Virginia September 8, 2009

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

Tackhead - I'm Afraid of Americans

Recorded in the studio, Vienna Feb2008.
From the forthcoming 'Sharehead' album.

Fueling Our Security: The Need for a Defense Energy Strategy

Defense Strategy, Energy Security, U.S. Military, Defense Budget, U.S. Department of Defense
Peter W. Singer, Director, 21st Century Defense Initiative
The Washington Examiner

Whether you believe global climate change is caused by human-driven carbon emissions or unicorn flatulence, it is inarguable that the issue of energy is an enormous national security concern. Our nation's dependency on nonrenewable and often foreign sources of energy does everything from bolster the power of illiberal regimes that control oil reserves to indirectly finance terrorist groups. Yet, even if none of these factors was in play, a new report out by the Brookings Institution, titled "Fueling the Balance," argues that our nation needs a defense energy strategy because of simple military pragmatism.
Our Department of Defense is the largest consumer of energy not just in America, but the world. It burns more petroleum in the course of its operations than any other private or public organization, as well as more than 100 nations, including Sweden, Pakistan and Iraq.
While some might weigh the environmental ramifications, we should think about this dependency in the way those in uniform must. Our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are bound by what one Marine general called "the tether of fuel." Roughly half of these operations' logistics is solely the movement of fuel, most of which is not even for combat vehicles. Indeed, three of the four least fuel-efficient Army vehicles are trucks that haul fuel, echoing how Civil War armies had massive mule trains that followed them, ironically carrying mostly hay for the mules.
This doesn't just tie our forces down to long supply lines, vulnerable to enemy attack, but costs soldiers' lives. An Army study found that a mere 1 percent improvement in energy efficiency would mean that troops in Iraq would have to serve on 6,444 fewer convoy missions, a role considered one of the most dangerous in the operation.
The financial costs are also considerable. In 2007, the military consumed 5.5 billion gallons of petroleum at a price of $12.6 billion. This figure reached roughly $20 billion in 2008 and is rising. The same massive use happens at military bases, which burn more than 30 million megawatt hours of electricity per year, costing more than $2 billion. Ninety-eight percent comes from the civilian market, which also makes our bases highly susceptible to the increasing spate of large-scale outages (caused by accidents and over-demand, as well as cyber-attack).
These costs are best understood as severe lost opportunities. For instance, every $10 increase in the price of a barrel of oil costs our military $1.3 billion. This is equivalent to a loss of almost the entire U.S. Marine Corps' procurement budget.
In short, thinking "green" about military energy would make our forces more agile, save lives, and increase the part of the military budget that actually gets spent on troops and new weapons rather than lining the pocket of some foreign leader or oil speculator. But while the Pentagon has recently made baby steps with a few pilot energy savings programs, it doesn't have an overarching strategy that sets clear goals or policy for the years ahead.
The energy issue is of such importance that it should be established in the Quadrennial Defense Review, the document that determines the Pentagon's overall vision of strategy, programs and resources every four years. With the next QDR due to Congress in early 2010, a closing window of opportunity must not be missed.
This is not just a matter of recognizing the climate issue or lauding the few, already existing programs, as often happens in such documents. In order to drive real change, a defined target finally needs to be enunciated in Defense Department energy use, such as a policy goal to be a net-zero energy consumer at its bases by 2030. This will guide action, as well as help provide top cover to the innovative programs being worked on at lower levels to unleash our forces from the tether of fuel.
Underlying this should be goals to shift all bases to "smart" power grids, fully account for the costs of fuel in deciding which systems to buy (just like buyers are doing now in "Cash for Clunkers"), and support research competitions into technologies to help the force reduce its dependency, as well as benefit the civilian market.
The issue of energy has too long been looked at only through an environmental lens, and real action too often deferred. It is high time we address the long-standing irony of fueling our national defense from a source that threatens our nation's security.
@ 'Brookings'

William S. Burroughs - A Man Within (Trailer)

Beat Generation writer William S. Burroughs not only hung out with the cool kids in the 1960s, but he continued to collaborate and conspire with great musicians, artists, and directors up until his death in 1997 at the age of 83. Now an impressive group of said former friends and colleagues will appear in forthcoming documentary William S. Burroughs: A Man Within.

The film, which chronicles Burroughs’ life, including his childhood, death of his wife, the 1966 banning of his novel Naked Lunch by the U.S. government, and more, features exclusive interviews with past collaborators, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Laurie Anderson, Throbbing Gristle’s Genesis P-Orridge, directors John Waters, Gus Van Sant, and David Cronenberg, Jello Biafra, and Iggy Pop. You seriously should check out the clip of Iggy’s insane commentary in the trailer above.

If that’s not enough to make you want to see this movie, what if I told you that Sonic Youth provide the soundtrack and it’s narrated by actor Peter Weller? That’s right, RoboCop himself.

Check out the trailer above or go here for the official site.

Via 'Twenty Four Bit'

William S. Burroughs: A Man Within - 5min Teaser Trailer

REPOST - Public Image Ltd.

Lydon reforms PIL

On Christmas Day 1978, almost exactly a year after the implosion of the Sex Pistols while on tour in San Francisco, the artist formerly known as Johnny Rotten unveiled his new band, Public Image Ltd, at the Rainbow theatre in London. The audience, John Lydon remembers with amusement, were "nauseated, because the bass frequency was so low your bowels started to vibrate". He lets out his familiar arch cackle. "Well, it's a different experience at Christmas."

@ 'The Guardian'

God! Was it that long ago?
I was actually at that gig at The Rainbow and well, it was an interesting Xmas day but to my ears the songs on that first album just were not that good, apart from obviously 'Public Image' itself, and I also always had problems with 'Belsen Was A Gas'.
Wobble WAS magnificent though.

Interview with John Coltrane (June 15th 1958)

Audio
Here

Tupac in Kazakhstan!

How UK Government spun 136 people into 7million illegal file sharers

The British Government's official figures on the level of illegal file sharing in the UK come from questionable research commissioned by the music industry, the BBC has revealed.

The Radio 4 show More or Less - which is devoted to the "often abused but ever ubiquitous world of numbers" - decided to examine the Government's claim that 7m people in Britain are engaged in illegal file sharing. The 7m figure comes from the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property, a Government advisory body. The Advisory Board claimed it commissioned the research from a team of academics at University College London, who it transpires got the 7m figure from a paper published by Forrester Research.The More or Less team hunted down the relevant Forrester paper, but could find no mention of the 7m figure, so they contacted the report's author Mark Mulligan. Mulligan claimed the figure actually came from a report he wrote about music industry losses for Forrester subsidiary Jupiter Research. That report was privately commissioned by none other than the music trade body, the BPI.

As if the Government taking official statistics directly from partisan sources wasn't bad enough, the BBC reporter Oliver Hawkins also found that the figures were based on some highly questionable assumptions. The 7m figure had actually been rounded up from an actual figure of 6.7m. That 6.7m was gleaned from a 2008 survey of 1,176 net-connected households, 11.6% of which admitted to having used file-sharing software - in other words, only 136 people.

@ 'PC Pro'

You can listen to the BBC Radio 4 show 'More or Less' here or download it here.

This could make someone very HAPPY or very GRUMPY!

Statue in Rotterdam

Prohibition's failed. Time for a new drugs policy

IN JUNE 1971, US President Richard Nixon declared a "war on drugs". Drugs won.

The policy of deploying the full might of the state against the production, supply and consumption of illegal drugs has not worked. Pretty much anyone in the developed world who wants to take illicit substances can buy them. Those purchases fund a multibillion dollar global industry that has enriched mighty criminal cartels, for whom law enforcement agencies are mostly just a nuisance, rarely a threat. Meanwhile, the terrible harm that drug dependency does to individuals and societies has not been reduced. Demand and supply flourish.

"It is time to admit the obvious," writes Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former president of Brazil, in the Observer today. "The 'war on drugs' has failed."

Earlier this year, Mr Cardoso co-chaired the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy with former presidents of Colombia and Mexico. They endorsed a collective shift in policy from repression of drug use to harm reduction. Last month, Argentina's supreme court declared the prosecution of individuals for the possession of small amounts of drugs to be unconstitutional. Colombia's constitutional court came to a similar conclusion in 1994.

The trend towards decriminalisation in Latin America is born of desperation. The continent is the world's largest exporter of cocaine and marijuana. Its economies and criminal justice systems have been corrupted by the trade; in some areas the power of the drug gangs rivals that of the state. Something had to change.

Something must change also in the countries that buy Latin America's biggest export. In Britain, more than half a million people aged 16-24 took cocaine last year, according to Home Office statistics. More than a third of all Britons aged 16-59 have taken drugs at some point in their lives; one in 10 in the last year.

Not all of those people are a menace to society. Most of them are not even a menace to themselves. Most who take drugs in their youth stop later on. A generation that has grown up with normalised recreational drug use now occupies the commanding heights of business, media and politics. They might not take drugs themselves, but they are not morally outraged by them.

That is a significant cultural change. The political fixation on drugs prohibition really took hold in the west in the 1960s as much from moral panic about a subversive counterculture as from analysis of the harm caused by particular drugs.

Since then, the law has tried to maintain a distinction between reputable and disreputable substances that neither users nor medical research recognise. Scientific attempts to classify drugs in terms of the harm they do – to the body and society – routinely place tobacco and alcohol ahead of cannabis and ecstasy. The point is not that the wrong drugs are banned, but that the law is nonsense to anyone with real knowledge of the substances involved.

One point of general agreement is that heroin is the big problem. It is highly addictive and those who are dependent – up to 300,000 in Britain – tend to commit a lot of crime to fund their habit. But then it is hard to tell how much of the problem is contained by prohibition and how much caused by it.

Leaving gangsters in charge of supply ensures that addicts get a more toxic product and get ever more ensnared in criminality.

Those arguments do not prove that the solution lies in legalisation, or even just decriminalisation. But as Mr Cardoso argues: "Continuing the drugs war with more of the same is ludicrous."

The entire framework of the debate must change. In Britain, we operate with laws that start from the premise that drug use is inherently morally wrong, and then seek ways to stop it. Instead we must start by evaluating the harm that drug use does, and then look for the best ways to alleviate it; and we must have the courage to follow that logic wherever it leads.

Today's editorial from 'The Observer'

Former president of Brazil says hardline war on drugs 'has failed'

The war on drugs has failed and should make way for a global shift towards decriminalising cannabis use and promoting harm reduction, says the former president of Brazil, writing today in the Observer. Fernando Henrique Cardoso argues that the hardline approach has brought "disastrous" consequences for Latin America, which has been the frontline in the war on drug cultivation for decades, while failing to change the continent's position as the largest exporter of cocaine and marijuana.

His intervention, which will reignite growing debate in Europe about how to tackle drugs, was welcomed yesterday by campaigners for drug law reform who increasingly see the impact on developing countries where drugs are produced as critical to the argument.

@ 'The Guardian'

Is America ready to admit defeat in its 40-year war on drugs?

The war on drugs is immoral idiocy. We need the courage of Argentina

This is what I meant:

More to follow about Linder etc...
but it is late and I need my beauty sleep
love, Mona
X
X
X

REPOST - A Certain Ratio - Shack Up

For Tom (without an H), Nick & others I bumped into earlier...

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - How About Thank You

WTF? Contraception myths 'widespread' in UK

A UK survey has revealed that myths about contraception may be widespread.

One in five women said they had heard of kitchen items, including bread, cling film and even chicken skin, being used as alternative barrier methods.

Others had heard food items such as kebabs, Coca-cola or crisps could be used as oral contraceptives.

@ 'BBC'

"Do ye fancy a fuck?"

"Aye, but we better get a kebab furst!"

Bill O'Reilly VS Amsterdam (part 2)

"The way they do statistics in the Netherlands is different. Plus, it's a much smaller country, a much smaller base to do the stats on."
HERE

Chelsea Duval-Major - Semiramide

Chelsea Duval-Major sings "a quel giorno" from Rossini's Semiramide. Accompanied by Neal Goren. Bucks County PA, 29 August 2009.
Chelsea is also starting at the CCM at the University of Cincinnati.

Slow Moscow

"Эй, вы можете прочитать запрещенную статью GQ про Путина здесь"

здесь

"Никто не осмелится назвать это тайнмым заговором.

Десять лет назад Россию была потрясена серией загадочных точечных взрывов, повлекших за собой смерти сотен людей. За ними последовала волна страха и террора, котрая сделала тогда почти не известного Владимира Путина самым властным человеком в стране. Но были вопросы на счет природы этих взрывов - волнующие улики, сведетельствующии о том, что организаторы могли работать на правительство.
В последующие годы люди, подвергавшие сомнеию официальную версию событий, один за
одним умолкли или скончались. За исключением одного.Скотт Андерсон нашел его."

Update on the GQ/Putin censorship story

Simon Owens

Following on from my earlier post I just received an e/mail from Simon Owens from Bloggasm with this news:

"I read your piece today about GQ's decision to bury their article that was critical of Vladimir Putin. I got a chance to interview Gawker's Nick Denton about Gawker's decision to run a Russian translation of the story on its site. I asked him about the copyright concerns behind it and why they decided to do it"
Read Simon's piece
HERE

Gawker has scans of the article from GQ
(Russian translation on its way.)
HERE

Ha! (Thanx Longy!)

GQ's self censorship battle over Putin story (Audio)

Timothy Fadek/Polaris

Scott Anderson, a veteran war correspondent, says he's disappointed GQ was frightened of circulating his story. "If you're worried about repercussions and you bow to them, you're basically surrendering to the other side." It was the reception his story ultimately received in the United States. "It was quite mysterious to me," Anderson says. "All of a sudden, it became clear that they were going to run the article but they were going to try to bury it under a rock as much as they possibly could." Anderson, 50, is an accomplished reporter and novelist who has written previously for Harper's Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, and Vanity Fair. His investigative piece, published in the September American edition of GQ, challenges the official line on a series of bombings that killed hundreds of people in 1999 in Russia. It profiles a former KGB agent who spoke in great detail and on the record, at no small risk to himself. But instead of trumpeting his reporting, GQ's corporate owners went to extraordinary lengths to try to ensure no Russians will ever see it.

@ 'NPR'

Bass sigh!

Julie Slick

"Material, A Band of Many Faces" by Robert Palmer (NY Times April 1981)

For a rock group with a particularly solid-sounding name, Material is curiously elusive. Sometimes this increasingly influential band, which has been singled out as one of New York's most original new groups by critics in this country and abroad, appears as a trio; sometimes it's a quintet. Tomorrow night at the Bond International Casino, it will be a four or five piece group with the pioneering free-jazz guitarist Sonny Sharrock as principal soloist.

On records like its recently released "Temporary Music Compilation" (on the French Celluloid label), Material has sounded something like a progressive-rock band with jazz leanings; with Mr. Sharrock on guitar, they sound more like a blizzard of shattering glass with a rock backbeat. Members of Material have recently been involved in even more diverse projects, ranging from a disco-funk record with the singer Nona Hendryx to meditative electronic-music with the composer and technical innovator Brian Eno, and punk rock with Richard Hell and the Voidoids.

"We've got a lot of directions to pursue" Bill Laswell, Material's bassist, said the other day. "We do get involved in quite a few projects, and we like bringing different people into Material. It's healthy for us as players, and it's a way of exposing good musicians to new audiences. But even though were fluid, we definitely are a band. And since whatever we play tends to have a strong pulse to it, I'd say we're a rock Band.

Mr. Laswell grew up in Detroit, and played with a number of disco-funk bands before arriving in New York City in 1978, where he met Michael Beinhorn, who plays synthesizer and manipulates pre-recorded tapes, and the drummer Fred Maher. These three first played together in a group called the Zu Band, but by summer '79 they were working as Material, with Cliff Cultreri, as the first of several guitarists to pass through the ranks.

Mr. Laswell is the most experienced member of the band. "Fred is just 18," he said, "and Michael is 20. But when I first met them, they bad this energy and attitude I was interested in."

The word "energy" crops up frequently in Mr. Laswell's conversation. It was energy that originally attracted him to Sonny Sharrock, who first recorded with Pharoah Sanders and other jazz musicians during the middle and late 1960's. Mr. Laswell played with Mr. Sharrock in a trio before introducing him to the other members of Material.

"Sonny is part of the band," Mr. Laswell maintained. "When Fred, Michael and I play with him, the four of us get a band sound that's definitely recognizable. It's really a challenge to work with him. When I was 15, he was my favorite guitar player, and he's been playing the way many of the new-wave rock guitarists play, and he has a lot of power."

But Material has also featured the English guitar experimentalist Fred Frith, the jazz trumpeter Olu Dara, and the saxophonists Byard Lancaster and Henry Threadgill among others. How can a band pursue such a revolving door policy and still be a band?

"Playing with really strong musicians changes our playing," Mr. Laswell responded. "We improvise and play off one another. We may sound somewhat different, depending on who's playing with us, but to me, that's an advantage. Most rock bands sound the same every time."

Tomorrow night's show at Bond's should prove particularly interesting. Material and the explosive Mr. Sharrock will play first, and they will be followed by the guitarist James (Blood) Ulmer, whose fusing of freeform jazz and dancable funk and rock rhythms has influenced a number of New York bands and paralells Material's experiments along simlar lines. Mr. Ulmer, who is both a jazz musician and a popular performer in New York's rock clubs, recently signed a contract with Columbia Records. It seems that the fusing of exploratory jazz-disco-funk and punk rock that has been shaping up in Manhattan during the last few years, is finally going to get national exposure.

Material is also involved in several recording projects for major-distributed labels. Tbe band's single with Nona Hendryx, who was formerly with the popular vocal Group La Belle, will be released by Ze Records within a month, and all three of of Material's core members, as well as Olu Dara, have appeared on what is expected to be Brian Eno's next album.

"We were interested in working with the larger record companies,but we don’t want to commit everything we do to any one company," Mr. Laswell explained. "A year ago we took a loft in Brooklyn and began building our own studio, which is now fully operational. We recorded with Nona Hendryx and Brian Eno there, and we've had other sessions, including a really interesting mix of musicians recording for the American Clave label."

The American Clave sessions included three generations of jazz saxophonists, two atonal guitarists, veteran Latin percussionists and other musicians.

"Having our own studio helps us stay independent of record companies," Mr. Laswell added. "We don't have to ask them to pay for studio time or to underwrite our recording sessions, and we keep our options open. We want to keep making dance music, but we also want to make music that isn't as commercial, some free-form improvising, maybe a big band at some point. Recording all these projects is the most important thing to us right now, but we're going to be performing around town once a month or so,and we hope to play some places besides the rock clubs. At the same time, exposing rock audiences to people like Sonny Sharrock and Olu Dara, has been really worthwhile, and we want to continue doing that."

Jazz musicians have worked in groups with constantly shifting personel for years, but Material's approach is new to rock. Will it work in the long run? Mr. Laswell noted that so far, the members of Material have been able to keep their various projects going simueltaeously with a minimum of conflict, and the groups work with Mr. Eno and other well-known musicians is generating a certain commercial momentum.

"As for the future," Mr. Laswell said, "We'll just work with as many musicians as we can. There's really no end to the people we can add to Material, and no end to what we can do."

Yet more assholes!

Talking of assholes!

Glenn Beck tries & fails at art history.
@ 'HuffPo'

"An escape valve, just letting off steam..." Assholes!

Condom ads

!?!

The reality of war

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is objecting “in the strongest terms” to an Associated Press decision to transmit a photograph showing a mortally wounded 21-year-old Marine in his final moments of life, calling the decision “appalling” and a breach of “common decency.”

US politicians do not want the people to see photos like this.
This is the reality...
NB: This is not the photo in question mentioned above.
The Wayback Machine at the archive has a lot more photos that perhaps would sway public opinion against all wars.

The making of Lou Barlow's 'Goodnight Unknown'

Cath Carroll remembered...

Peter Terzian, editor of the anthology Heavy Rotation, and two of the collection's contributors--Martha Southgate and Joshua Ferris --talk about the unique and essential relationship between life and music and talk about the record albums that have inspired them.

Who is Cath Carroll I can hear you collectively ask?

The Rolling Stones - Exile On Main Street Blues