Soundscapes

'Miami' Steve blasts Primal Scream

Grab it before it disappears...

Seriously!!!

?

Sounds like a great idea to me...
No...really! It does...

Get yr head into this...

Melbourne’s own Luke Brown (Leslie Salvador) and Thomas Henderson have come together for a new side project: Negativ Magick. The boys have handed us a mix which is absolute quality as always. Very dark, 80’s – early 90’s dark wave, industrial, goth and new beat. Its not your average mix, this is inky, deep and very mature. This one calls for a bit of audience participation too, we’re not going to post the tracks, just the labels so you can do a bit of digging and discover some new shit for yourselves.

Labels (In order):

Ink Records
Subway
Paragoric
Merciful Release
Epitaph Records
VVM
Kaos Dance
Wax Trax
No Label
Finiflex
Wax Trax
Dean Records
Virgin
New Zone
Concrete Productions

Perfect for a dark sweaty warehouse party.

MP3: Negativ Magick Mix

Download'n'enjoy!
Look I survived. So will you.

Richard Hell reads in Tompkins Square Park, NY

HA! BBC newsreader needs a comma!

Gordon Brown apologises after Turing petition

Gordon Brown has said he was sorry for the "appalling" way World War II code breaker Alan Turing was treated for being gay.

A petition on the No 10 website had called for a posthumous government apology to the computer pioneer. In 1952 Turing was prosecuted for gross indecency after admitting a sexual relationship with a man. Two years later he killed himself.

The campaign was the idea of computer scientist John Graham-Cumming. He was seeking an apology for the way the mathematician was treated after his conviction. He also wrote to the Queen to ask for Turing to be awarded a posthumous knighthood. The campaign was backed by Ian McEwan, scientist Richard Dawkins and gay-rights campaigner Peter Tatchell. The petition posted on the Downing Street website attracted thousands of signatures. Mr Brown said: "While Mr Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him."

National legacy

He said Mr Turing deserved recognition for his contribution to humankind. In the statement he said: "So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work I am very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so much better."

Organisers of the petition welcomed the move and Mr Turing's three nieces said they were "delighted" and "very glad" to see the injustice recognised. Alan Turing was given experimental chemical castration as a "treatment" and his security privileges were removed, meaning he could not continue work for the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). Alan Turing is most famous for his code-breaking work at Bletchley Park during WWII, helping to create the Bombe that cracked messages enciphered with the German Enigma machines.

However, he also made significant contributions to the emerging fields of artificial intelligence and computing. In 1936 he established the conceptual and philosophical basis for the rise of computers in a seminal paper called On Computable Numbers, while in 1950 he devised a test to measure the intelligence of a machine. Today it is known as the Turing Test. After the war he worked at many institutions including the University of Manchester, where he worked on the Manchester Mark 1, one of the first recognisable modern computers. There is a memorial statue of him in Manchester's Sackville Gardens which was unveiled in 2001.

@ 'BBC'

David Lynch installation at Galeries Lafayette du Boulevard Haussmann in France

HERE

Massive Attack on the new album

Sitting at the control desk of Massive Attack's studio, which lurks on an unprepossessing Bristol industrial estate, Robert "3D" del Naja lets out a sigh. No, he says, the album isn't exactly finished yet. Actually, he can't exactly say how finished it is. Six years after Massive Attack last released an album, its followup is "in a kind of state of flux". It's nearly done. They've had a lot of collaborators in. There was Guy Garvey from Elbow, Damon Albarn, Tunde Adebimpe from TV On the Radio and the California singer Hope Sandoval, the last of whom seems to have left what you might most politely describe as a lasting impression. "You ever seen 'Ope Sandoval?" asks the other half of Massive Attack, Grant Marshall, in his soft West Country burr, before exhaling heavily. "Fuckin' 'ell, mate."
@ 'The Guardian'

Al-Qaida: 8 years after 9/11

The meeting was tense. The six recruits, from immigrant communities in France and Belgium, had decided to confront their al-Qaida handler. Before leaving their homes, they had watched al-Qaida videos on the internet and seen massed battalions of mujahideen training on assault courses, exciting ambushes and inspiring speeches by Osama bin Laden. Now they had spent months in Pakistan's rugged frontier zones and had done nothing more than basic small arms training, some physical exercise and religious instruction. They had been deceived, they complained to the Syrian militant looking after them. The videos had lied. Their handler was unapologetic. The flashy videos were a "trick" that served a dual purpose, he told them, "to intimidate enemies and to attract new recruits – propaganda."
@ 'The Guardian'

(In German:) Die woman die!

A conversation between Mikhail Gorbachev and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

"The reunification of Germany is not in the interests of Britain and Western Europe. It might look different from public pronouncements, in official communiqué at Nato meetings, but it is not worth paying ones attention to it. We do not want a united Germany. This would have led to a change to post-war borders and we can not allow that because such development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security. "

September 23 1989
@ 'The Times'

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