Monday 11 January 2010

Chris Carter - Experimental Tribute

A tribute (as part of the CCCL project) to the experimental work of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Israel needs to rethink its Gaza strategy before it's too late

After a year of relative quiet in the south following the cease-fire that ended Operation Cast Lead, there has been a marked escalation in violence along the Israel-Gaza border. Qassam rockets and mortars are being fired from Gaza, and the Israel Air Force retaliated by attacking targets in the Strip, killing several Palestinians. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Hamas that Israel would "respond forcefully" to any fire on its territory.
Incidents involving live fire have aggravated relations between Hamas and Egypt, which is tightening the siege on Gaza. The Egyptians are building an underground steel wall to thwart smuggling through tunnels into Sinai, and are prohibiting supply convoys from entering Gaza through the Rafah crossing. Foreign peace activists who wanted to show support for Gaza were stopped in Cairo.
Gaza erupts whenever Israelis begin to feel that the Strip and its troubles have been forgotten. There is no easy solution to the troubles of 1.5 million poor Palestinians under double blockade, by Israel and Egypt, and whose government is being boycotted by countries around the world. A renewal of rocket fire shows that even a major military operation that brought death and destruction cannot ensure long-term deterrence and calm.

Israel has an interest in stopping escalation at the border so as not to find itself caught up in another belligerent confrontation with Hamas. Netanyahu's threats have not attained this goal. Like his predecessor, he risks placing his imprimatur on public commitments that will only push Israel toward another military operation to "strengthen deterrence" and teach Hamas a lesson."
The time has come to rethink Israeli strategy in Gaza. The economic embargo, which has brought severe distress to the inhabitants of Gaza, has not brought down Hamas, nor has it freed kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. The siege has only damaged Israel's image and led to accusations that it has shirked its humanitarian responsibilities in Gaza under international law.
Instead of erring by invoking the default solution of more force, which does not create long-term security or ease the distress of the Palestinians in Gaza, the crossings between Israel and the Gaza Strip should be opened and indirect assistance rendered to rebuild its ruins. The same logic that dictates the government's actions in the West Bank - creating an economic incentive to prevent terror - can and must work in the Gaza Strip as well.

@'Haaretz'

Iran Panel Rebukes Official for Abuses

An Iranian parliamentary committee found Tehran's former prosecutor responsible for the decision to house protesters in an unsuitable detention facility where at least three detainees died from alleged torture, Iranian state media reported Sunday.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, right, arrives to deliver a speech to parliament in Tehran on Sunday. A parliamentary committee blamed a former prosecutor for the decision to detain protesters in a facility where they were allegedly tortured and where at least three died.

The finding by lawmakers represents the highest specific rebuke so far of a government official in the handling of domestic unrest that followed contested June 12 presidential elections.

The committee's findings aren't binding, but they underscore the subtle role the body has played so far in questioning the actions of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government amid postelection unrest.

In the weeks and months that followed the disputed vote, many parliament members demanded an investigation of alleged abuses at Kahrizak, a holding facility where some protesters were detained. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the detention center closed amid allegations of abuse, including rape, of detained protesters.

Last month, military prosecutors said at least three detainees at the facility died due to torture, and they charged 12 prison officials with unspecified offenses related to the deaths. The charges marked a dramatic reversal by the government, which had for months denied any significant abuse, blaming the deaths on an outbreak of meningitis.

On Sunday, the Iranian Students News Agency reported that the parliamentary committee's spokesman had released the full report to lawmakers. It said the report found the decision to move detainees to Kahrizak, despite inhospitable conditions there, was that of Tehran's former prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi.

"The officials in Kahrizak initially refused to receive prisoners but because the judicial official -- Mortazavi -- insisted, they were forced to admit" 147 prisoners into a 750-square-foot space, the Associated Press quoted the report saying. The fact-finding panel "directly blames" Mr. Mortazavi for ordering the transfer, Press TV, the state-run, English-language news outlet reported Sunday. The panel, however, didn't find evidence of rape or sexual abuse at the detention facility, Press TV reported.

Mr. Mortazavi was removed from his post as Tehran prosecutor in August and appointed instead as Iran's deputy prosecutor general. Technically, the move was a promotion, but it also removed him from his high-profile prosecutorial role.

Mr. Mortazavi hasn't commented about his role in transferring detainees to Kahrizak.

@'Wall Street Journal'

The Harvard Psychedelic Club

AP Photo In 1960, Timothy Leary set up an infamous institute at Harvard to experiment with psychedelic drugs. An exclusive excerpt from Don Lattin’s new book on how lifestyle guru Andrew Weil and other freshmen started tripping.
Andy Weil and Ronnie Winston were friends and dorm mates in Claverly Hall. They were both incoming Harvard freshmen when they walked into Leary’s office on Divinity Lane and volunteered to be research subjects in his psychedelic research project. Weil had grown up in a middle-class family. Winston was the son of Harry Winston, the wealthy diamond and jewelry manufacturer whose creations hung around the necks of trophy wives and Hollywood starlets from coast to coast. Neither of them would officially take part in the project, but they would both play an important, little-known role in the rise and fall of Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary.
Winston would eventually be brought into the psychedelic family. Weil would not, and the implications of that unequal treatment would forever alter the careers and life paths of Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert.

He didn’t see the experiences as just an excuse to get high. He wasn’t rebelling against anything. He was just curious, eager to understand what was going on inside his own brain.

Weil and Winston had both read The Doors of Perception, Huxley’s book about the insights the British writer gleaned from his 1953 mescaline trip. They walked into Leary’s little office on Divinity Avenue eager to fly off on their own mystical journey.
They were a bit nervous when they sat down, but Leary soon put them at ease with his soft-spoken charm.
“Yes,” Leary said, “Huxley was the trailblazer. You know, I didn’t have a clue as to the potential of this research until I had my own experience with psilocybin mushrooms over the summer. At its core, you have to understand that this is not an intellectual exercise. It is experiential. It is, and I’m almost embarrassed to say it, religious. But it is more than religious. It is exhilarating. It shows us that the human brain possesses infinite potentialities. It can operate in space-time dimensions that we never dreamed even existed. I feel like I’ve awakened from a long ontological sleep.”
Weil and Winston were on the edge of their seats.
“Anyway,” Leary continued, “the research is pretty straightforward. Our subjects take a controlled dose of synthesized psilocybin. We make sure they are in a safe and comfortable setting. We’re trying to get people from all walks of life, not just graduate students. We’re giving this stuff to priests and prisoners and everyone in between. They do a session about once a month and are expected to write up a two-to three-page report describing the experience. Between sessions, we get together and discuss whatever insights we’ve gleaned from all this. Now, I assume neither of you have had any experience with these substances.”
“No, sir, we have not,” Weil replied. “But we are ready, willing, and able.”
“I can see that,” Leary said. “But I think we may have a little problem. How old are you boys?”
“Eighteen.”
“That’s what I was afraid of. You see, our agreement with the university does not allow us to use undergraduates in this research.”
“That’s what we were afraid of,” Weil said. “To tell you the truth, some of us over at Claverly were thinking of running our own series of tests, and we were wondering if you could clue us in on how we might obtain some of these pills.”
“Well, I could, but I’d better not do that, boys,” Leary replied. “But if you’re persistent, I’m sure you can find your own source.”...

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@'Daily Beast'

One on One - Richard Dawkins (9 January 2010)

Kiribati - A Climate Change Reality

The Americanization of Mental Illness

Americans, particularly if they are of a certain leftward-leaning, college-educated type, worry about our country’s blunders into other cultures. In some circles, it is easy to make friends with a rousing rant about the McDonald’s near Tiananmen Square, the Nike factory in Malaysia or the latest blowback from our political or military interventions abroad. For all our self-recrimination, however, we may have yet to face one of the most remarkable effects of American-led globalization. We have for many years been busily engaged in a grand project of Americanizing the world’s understanding of mental health and illness. We may indeed be far along in homogenizing the way the world goes mad...

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@'NY Times'

If you can't find the book you want you're probably shopping here...

(Thanx Scurvy!)

Sunday 10 January 2010

As this is going around the interwebbynethingy...

Hmmmm!
Saw this the other day...

The ONLY way to watch #filmsmadescottish

What Bill Clinton allegedly said about Obama

One of the enduring mysteries of the 2008 campaign was what got Ted Kennedy so mad at Bill Clinton. The former president's entreaties, at some point, backfired, and the explanation has never quite emerged.
I've finally gotten my hands on a copy of Game Change, in which John Heliemann and Mark Halperin report:

[A]s Hillary bungled Caroline, Bill’s handling of Ted was even worse. The day after Iowa, he phoned Kennedy and pressed for an endorsement, making the case for his wife. But Bill then went on, belittling Obama in a manner that deeply offended Kennedy. Recounting the conversation later to a friend, Teddy fumed that Clinton had said, A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.

@'Politico'

And yet another perspective...

This video clearly shows what happened the last moments before the Shonan Maru rammed the Ady Gil causing it to sink. Note how at the start of the clip, Pete asks the person at the helm to stop the ship, and how the Shonan Maru is far behind them.

Bloody hell!

A police sub inspector who died after being attacked by a gang in Tirunelveli district on Thursday allegedly failed to get help from Media (cameraman stood, recording the event ) & two ministers who were passing by in their cavalcade.

Police said R Vetrivel, 44, was a victim of mistaken identity and the assailants were after another police officer. The gang threw crude bombs at Vetrivel, severely injuring his right leg. Vetrivel was then attacked with sickles, suffering deep injuries on his neck and head.
Full story
HERE

James Ellroy and David Peace in conversation

Whatever happened to that Asian punk band?

Alien Kulture in 1980, clockwise from top: Azhar Rana (drums), Huw Jones (guitar), Pervez Bilgrami (vocals) and Ausaf Abbas (bass).

It is 1979. In a cafe in Wimbledon, south London, three young Asian men are deep in conversation. The Conservative victory of a few months earlier has left them dejected; the anti-Nazi demonstrations, the involvement with Rock Against Racism, the rallies against the National Front – none of it prevented the Tories from getting in. This is not a good time to be Asian, and things are, the men fear, about to get much worse. Margaret Thatcher, the new prime minister, has already voiced concerns, in a television interview the previous year, that "people are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture".

The men are frustrated and impatient; protest has not worked, so what is left? Punk, that's what. The friends decide to form a band, an Asian punk band that will talk about their lives and fears as second-generation sons of immigrants. The longer they talk the more exciting the prospect seems; the lyrics and music will come later but right now they need a name. It seems obvious: if Thatcher thinks they are an alien culture, then Alien Kulture is what they will be.

An Asian punk band? Even today the idea seems rather absurd, so how much more strange must it have seemed 30 years ago when Ausaf Abbas, Azhar Rana, Pervez Bilgrami and "token white" Huw Jones decided to form Alien Kulture. Abbas and Rana had been friends since they were both six, living in south London, children of middle-class Pakistani immigrants. By the late 70s, they had wound up studying the same course at the London School of Economics. "I was always political," recalls Abbas. "I was going on demonstrations as a teenager and the arrival of Margaret Thatcher just electrified everything – it gave us even more to rant and rave about."

The Pakistani community in Balham was tightly knit so it was perhaps inevitable that Abbas and Rana would run into Bilgrami, another young Asian who shared their twin loves of politics and punk. "I remember the first time I saw the Sex Pistols on So it Goes," Bilgrami says. "It was 'Anarchy in the UK' and I was half-asleep; hearing the song was like an awakening. I didn't have a place in this society and it suddenly hit me that this was music that I could play, something I could be part of."

This was a time when Asians were largely invisible in popular culture. It was the emergence of punk, with its ethos that anyone could be in a band, that inspired the young Asians to believe they could emulate their musical heroes. "The band was formed in response to punk," confirms Abbas. "It meshed so well with the politics of the time and I remember watching as the white kids of punk began jamming with the black guys doing reggae and thinking we brown kids don't have anything."

Rock Against Racism, set up with the explicit aim of countering the electoral threat of the National Front, largely consisted of well-meaning white bands alongside some black musicians; out on the streets, it was Asians who were being stabbed and killed. "Our story of being second-generation Asians was not being heard," says Bilgrami. "There was no one else saying what we wanted to say."...

Continue reading

@'The Guardian'

Lee Perry - I Am The Upsetter

Scratch updates his '60s rock steady hit "I am the Upsetter" at Joe Gibbs recording studio in 1982. Footage includes shots in the control room with the late great Errol Thompson at the controls, assisting Scratch as he annoints the studio with ganja during playback,

Lee Perry - Pum Pum

Not the greatest song from not the greatest album that Scratch has made.

What did you expect? The album was produced by Andrew W.K. and even has Dave 'David' Tibet 'Michael' on it!

Saving grace on this track is that there are vocals contributed by Sasha Grey *sigh*!

Game Change

Excerpt from Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin.

@'NY Mag'

The Knife - Heartbeats

Fever Ray - Seven

RePost: Kowloon Walled City

An amazing walk around and through the 'Walled City of Kowloon'.

Looks fugn magnificent!

Togo government tells team to quit Cup of Nations

Togo's footballers are being recalled from the Africa Cup of Nations by their government following a deadly attack on the team's bus in Angola.

An assistant coach, press officer and driver were killed. Two players were shot and injured in Friday's attack.
The Angolan government and tournament officials had been pressing Togo to stay for their group games in Cabinda.
Togo government minister Pascal Bodjona said the team was coming home because the players were in a state of shock.
He added: "We cannot in such a dramatic circumstance continue in the Africa Cup of Nations."
Togo were due to play Ghana in their opening match on Monday. Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso are the other teams in Group B.
Angola's prime minister Paulo Kassoma met with African football officials in Luanda to offer reassurances on the safety of the players on the eve of the tournament.

"The prime minister considers the incident in Cabinda as an isolated act and repeated that the security of Togo's team and the other squads is guaranteed," his office said in a statement.
But his efforts appear to have been in vain, with the Togolese government telling its team to leave Angola.
Earlier, Togo coach Hubert Velud told French radio station RMC that he thought consideration should be given to cancelling the entire tournament.
"We can at least pose that question," he said. "It's an act of barbarism while we are here to celebrate African football."
In an interview with a French radio station, Togo's first-choice goalkeeper, Kossi Agassa, said none of his team wanted to remain in the tournament.
"None of the team is ready to play, we're all devastated, everyone wants to go and see their family," he said.
"We came here to take part in a festival of African football, but it's as if we've gone to war."

Aston Villa's Togolese midfielder Moustapha Salifou was thankful for the presence of the security team after he emerged unscathed from the incident, which happened after the team had entered Angola from neighbouring Congo, but he said he felt lucky to be alive.
He told Villa's website: "Our security people saved us. They were in two cars, about 10 of them in total, and they returned fire.
"The shooting lasted for half an hour and and I could hear the bullets whistling past me. It was like a movie.
"It was only 15 minutes after we crossed the border into Angola that we came under heavy fire. The driver was shot almost immediately and died instantly so we were just stopped on the road with nowhere to go.
"I know I am really lucky. I was in the back of the coach with Emmanuel Adebayor and one of the goalkeepers. A defender sat in front of me took two shots in the back.
"The goalkeeper Kodjovi Obilale Dodo, one of my best friends, was shot in the stomach and was flown to South Africa to undergo an operation to save his life.
"It was horrific. Everybody was crying. I don't know how anyone can do this.
"I am back at our camp in Cabinda with my team-mates but we all want to go home to Togo. We have made our decision. We can't play in these circumstances and want to leave for home.
"We don't want to compete in the tournament because our assistant manager and the press officer have been killed. As a team we have made this decision."

The Ivory Coast's team coach under heavy armed guard

The Ivory Coast's team bus had a heavy police guard on Saturday

Togo captain, and Manchester City striker, Adebayor, who was on the coach but also unharmed, has been told by his club that he will be given as much time as needs to recover from the attack.
On Friday he said many of his team-mates wanted to go home.
He told BBC Afrique: "It's a football game, it's one of the biggest tournaments in Africa and a lot of people would love to be in our position but I don't think anybody would be prepared to give their life.
"If I am alive I can still play football tomorrow and in one year maybe even another Cup of Nations but I am not ready to pass away now."
Defender Serge Akakpo, who plays for Romanian club Vaslui, was hit by two bullets and lost a lot of blood in the attack in Angola's oil-rich territory of Cabinda, which is due to host seven matches.
Adebayor said the players were unsure whether Akakpo would survive at the time, but his club reported that his condition was stabilised and he underwent successful surgery.
Reserve keeper Obilale, who plays for French club GSI Pontivy, was also wounded, while several other players required hospital treatment and were later seen with bandages on legs, hands and faces.

"I don't think any of the players will be able to sleep after this," said Adebayor, who admitted they were all still in shock.
"You cannot sleep after what we have seen - one of your team-mates with bullets in his body in front of you, crying and losing consciousness. It is very difficult."
Souleymane Habuba, spokesman for organisers the Confederation of African Football (CAF), said the tournament would proceed despite the attack.
"Our great concern is for the players, but the championship goes ahead," said Habuba, who questioned why Togo had elected to travel by road rather than flying.
"CAF's regulations are clear: teams are required to fly rather than travel by bus," he added.
Football's world governing body Fifa has expressed its concern about the attack.
"Fifa and its president, Sepp Blatter, are deeply moved by today's incidents which affected Togo's national team, to whom they express their utmost sympathy," said a statement.
"Fifa is in touch with the African Football Confederation (CAF) and its president, Issa Hayatou, from which it expects a full report on the situation."

@'BBC'

Starkey - 1xtra Mix

The Damned

HA!

Rowland S. Howard

Lots of live recordings of Rowland solo & with These Immortal Souls, Crime & The City Solution, Lydia Lunch and The Boys Next Door.

Remember him this way!

HERE

Never before seen Final Academy footage

Super 8 footage from The Final Academy 1982 , somewhere are the tapes to do a sound montage but in the meantime the music is "Crowtime" by Skintologists,to hear more visit

HERE

(I love the interwebbynet!

Inspired by my posting of WSB earlier, Fritz from 23 Skidoo

has just put up his footage from that remarkable event!

Thanx man!)

Pacou - liveset 1-2010

How true!

davidhepworth

Listening to Exile On Main Street on the original vinyl. If you've only heard this on CD you really have no idea. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

Currently reading...

My eldest son recommended this. An excellent read.

Review here.

Cancer Risks Debated for Type of X-Ray Scan

The plan for broad use of X-ray body scanners to detect bombs or weapons under airline passengers’ clothes has rekindled a debate about the safety of delivering small doses of radiation to millions of people — a process some experts say is certain to result in a few additional cancer deaths.

The scanning machines, called “backscatter scanners,” deliver a dose of ionizing radiation equivalent to 1 percent or less of the radiation in a dental X-ray. The amount is so small that the risk to an individual is negligible, according to radiation experts. But collectively, the radiation doses from the scanners incrementally increase the risk of fatal cancers among the thousands or millions of travelers who will be exposed, some radiation experts believe.

Full-body scanners that are already in place in some airports around the country and abroad use a different type of imaging technology, called millimeter wave, that uses less powerful, non-ionizing radiation that does not pose the same risk.

But those machines also produce images that are less clear. And in the wake of the attempted bombing of an airplane traveling to Detroit from Amsterdam on Dec. 25, the United States is turning to backscatter scanners for routine security checks. Congress has appropriated funds for 450 scanners to be placed in American airports. On Thursday, President Obama called for greater use of “imaging technology” to spot weapons and explosives.

Some other countries may follow suit. Britain plans to use whole-body scanners and may test the backscatter system. On Friday, the French government said it would begin testing a few scanners of the millimeter wave type at Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports, for flights bound for the United States. Italy and the Netherlands also plan to use the millimeter-wave scanners.

Most discussion about full-body scanners has focused on privacy issues surrounding the nude images that would result. The American Civil Liberties Union has denounced the practice as a “virtual strip search.”

Some experts argue that the broad use of the scanners raises the same question that pertains to any other routine exposure to small doses of radiation: Do the benefits outweigh the risks?

“The guiding principle is not whether Mother Nature is going to kill you one day,” said Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear physicist. “It’s whether we can justify doing something to each other based on the benefit you’re going to get.”

Officials at the Transportation Security Administration say they have already tried out a handful of backscatter scanners. They could acquire 450 from the manufacturer, Rapiscan Systems, by the end of September. The agency has a contract under which it could buy 900 of the scanners. The machines have been used for years at prisons and other places where the authorities look for weapons, including at nuclear power plants.

In a 2002 report on the safety of backscatter scanners, the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, which is highly influential in setting regulatory standards, said it “cannot exclude the possibility of a fatal cancer attributable to radiation in a very large population of people exposed to very low doses of radiation.”

One author of that report, David J. Brenner, a professor of radiation biophysics at Columbia and director of the university’s Center for Radiological Research, said that risk might be increased as the transportation agency moves from using the scanning machines as a second-round check after metal detectors and hand searches to using them as a first-line screening system.

“When we were looking at these a few years back, it was always going to be as a secondary screening tool,” he said. “In that scenario, I don’t think there’s too much concern.” But, he said, if millions or tens of millions of passengers a year were scanned with the backscatter X-ray, he said, the risk would be higher.

The health effect of small doses of radiation is not observed, but inferred from the visible effects of higher doses. Dr. Makhijani said that if a billion passengers were screened with the dose assumed by the radiation protection council, that would mean 10 more cancer deaths a year.

Those deaths would represent only a tiny increment over the existing cancer rate, he said, just as the extra dose was a tiny fraction of the natural background dose of radiation people get from everyday exposures, but he added that they should still be considered.

Edward Lyman, a nuclear expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that the additional deaths would be indistinguishable from cancers resulting from other causes. But he said, “Just because they can’t be attributed in an epidemiology study to the additional radiation, it doesn’t mean they’re not there.”

Other experts, however, including David A. Schauer, the radiation council’s executive director, disputed the idea that collective doses of radiation increased risks significantly.

Doses divided into tiny portions among millions of people are not the same as those concentrated on a few people, Dr. Schauer said.

“I personally don’t buy it,” he said. “From a public health point of view, it’s a bit of a stretch.”

The radiation council sets standards for doses to radiation workers and to the general public, but does not set a standard for a collective dose.

Robert Barish, a radiation consultant in New York and the author of a 1996 book, “The Invisible Passenger,” said the doses delivered by the scanners were tiny by any standard, and passengers would get the same dose in a few minutes in a high-altitude jet, where most of the earth’s atmosphere is not available to shield people from cosmic rays.

A spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration, Kristin Lee, said that even for pregnant women, children and people whose genetic makeup made them more susceptible to X-ray damage, “It would take more than 1,000 screenings per individual per year” to exceed radiation standards.

According to a blog published by the Transportation Security Administration, the radiation dose from the scanner is about the same amount as an average American receives from natural background sources in four minutes on the ground.

But Dr. Lyman, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, noted that at one point the blog had listed a much higher dose for the scanners. When the discrepancy was pointed out, the agency corrected the blog to the lower figure.

Backscatter scanners work by shooting a beam of X-rays at a subject. But rather than making an image from what passes through the body, as a doctor’s diagnostic X-ray machine does, backscatter machines measure what bounces back, producing an image of the passenger without clothing. The X-rays are a form of ionizing radiation, that is, radiation powerful enough to strip molecules in the body of their electrons, creating charged particles that cause cell damage and are thought to be the mechanism through which radiation causes cancer.

@'NY Times'

The Clash - Armagideon Time (Live)

(Concert For Kampuchea 1979)

(US Festival 1983)

دانشگاه شریف 19 دیماه

On Jan 9th, students of Sharif University (Tehran) in protest to the coup government and the illegal detention of their fellow classmates held a peaceful gathering. They were chanting students would rather die than give in to tyranny and imprisoned students must be released.

Saturday 9 January 2010

A Semiotext(e) Reader
PDF
HERE

William Burroughs in London ('Pirate Tape' by Derek Jarman)

WSB in London at the time of the Final Academy.

Meanwhile in LaLa land - "It would be like discovering that Buddha, unbeknownst to anybody, had sat down and wrote down the entirety of his discoveries and it could be verified that he wrote it,"

More than 1,000 unreleased recordings of lectures by L. Ron Hubbard and reams of corresponding writings have been unveiled in the culmination of a 25-year project to locate, restore and transcribe lost pieces of the Scientology founder's work.

The new materials were announced in a New Year's celebration at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles that was broadcast to churches around the world last week and include 1,020 lectures and hundreds of corresponding booklets from courses and other sessions with Scientology ministers from 1953 to 1961. They include discussions of how Hubbard arrived at the principles of Dianetics and his research on everything from decision-making to personal responsibility.

They were recovered through a painstaking hunt that led members to find tapes and papers in a basement in Wichita, Kan., a storage trailer in Phoenix, and a garage in Oakland, Calif., among other places. Some of the materials were believed to have been lost...

@'SanFran Chronicle'