Monday 22 March 2010
Sunday 21 March 2010
A rare wee thing for fan's of THAT band we saw last night
Tracklist:
1. Brave New World and score (28:57)
2. Bullet Boy Vox (4:10)
2. Bullet Boy Vox (4:10)
Soundtrack by Massive Attack collaborator Neil Davidge with 3D featured on 'Bullet Boy'
Until the Melbourne vids appear
My extreme thanx to whoever left their bike next to the fence behind the ticket office (and 40 yards from the fat bouncer at the souvlaki stand) whose saddle helped me jump the fence at Massive Attack tonight 3 songs into the set.
Us cyclists SHOULD stick together...
Massive Attack hit Melbourne’s Myer Music Bowl on their fourth Australian tonight (March 20) with a truly spectacular performance.
The anarchistic, angry, aggressive hated of politicians and capitalism was on display in an awe-inspiring way that would leave most punk rock activists shaking in their boots.
The spectacular backdrop was littered with angst-ridden messages often targeting Australian tabloid fodder. During their 1998 track ‘Risingson’ the screen flashes messages including “Bingle: Who Cares?” and “Pauline Hanson to Emigrate”. Their political awareness did not let up and their message came through loud and clear. The whole show was a metaphorical “fuck you” to capitalism.
Even if you’re the kind to ignore a band’s politics, it was brilliant enough just hearing the band trawl through classic songs that defined the trip-hop genre over the past two decades. Songs such as 1992’s ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ and ‘Safe From Harm’ sounded right at home next to ‘Splitting The Atom’, ‘Babel’ or ‘Psyche’.
‘Teardrop’ was reinvented by the stunning voice of Martina Topley-Bird, who played a solo set in support to a disappointingly uninterested crowd (for future reference, she has two very excellent solo albums and a third one on the way). Her quirky voice and beautiful phrasing added a new touch to a classic crowd-pleaser of a song.
There is an old rule in show business that you never open with a show-stopper, but this incredible performance opened with one and never looked back.
No review, no dodgy clip on YouTube and no tales from your mates will give you the slightest clue as to how incredible this performance is. If it is coming to a town near you, get a ticket. Get a ticket the second they are on sale. Sell your mother if you have to, just go.
Tim Cashmere @'Undercover'
Saturday 20 March 2010
Sceptic Challenges Guru to Kill Him Live on TV
When a famous tantric guru boasted on television that he could kill another man using only his mystical powers, most viewers either gasped in awe or merely nodded unquestioningly. Sanal Edamaruku’s response was different. “Go on then — kill me,” he said.
Mr Edamaruku had been invited to the same talk show as head of the Indian Rationalists’ Association — the country’s self-appointed sceptic-in-chief. At first the holy man, Pandit Surender Sharma, was reluctant, but eventually he agreed to perform a series of rituals designed to kill Mr Edamaruku live on television. Millions tuned in as the channel cancelled scheduled programming to continue broadcasting the showdown, which can still be viewed on YouTube.
First, the master chanted mantras, then he sprinkled water on his intended victim. He brandished a knife, ruffled the sceptic’s hair and pressed his temples. But after several hours of similar antics, Mr Edamaruku was still very much alive — smiling for the cameras and taunting the furious holy man.
“He was over, finished, completely destroyed!” Mr Edamaruku chuckles triumphantly as he concludes the tale in the Rationalist Centre, his second-floor office in the town of Noida, just outside Delhi.
Rationalising India has never been easy. Given the country’s vast population, its pervasive poverty and its dizzying array of ethnic groups, languages and religions, many deem it impossible.
Nevertheless, Mr Edamaruku has dedicated his life to exposing the charlatans — from levitating village fakirs to televangelist yoga masters — who he says are obstructing an Indian Enlightenment. He has had a busy month, with one guru arrested over prostitution, another caught in a sex-tape scandal, a third kidnapping a female follower and a fourth allegedly causing a stampede that killed 63 people.
This week India’s most popular yoga master, Baba Ramdev, announced plans to launch a political party, promising to cleanse India of corruption and introduce the death penalty for slaughtering cows. Then, on Wednesday, police arrested a couple in Maharashtra state on suspicion of killing five boys on the advice of a tantric master who said their sacrifice would help the childless couple to conceive.
“The immediate goal I have is to stop these fraudulent babas and gurus,” says Mr Edamaruku, 55, a part-time journalist and publisher from the southern state of Kerala. “I want people to make their own decisions. They should not be guided by ignorance, but by knowledge.
“I’d like to see a post-religious society — that would be an ideal dream, but I don’t know how long it would take.”
His organisation traces its origins to the 1930s when the “Thinker’s Library” series of books, published by Britain’s Rationalist Press Association, were first imported to India. They included works by Aldous Huxley, Charles Darwin and H.G. Wells; among the early subscribers was Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister.
The Indian Rationalist Association was founded officially in Madras in 1949 with the encouragement of the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, who sent a long letter of congratulations. For the next three decades it had no more than 300 members and focused on publishing pamphlets and debating within the country’s intellectual elite.
But since Mr Edamaruku took over in 1985, it has grown into a grass-roots organisation of more than 100,000 members — mainly young professionals, teachers and students — covering most of India. Members now spend much of their time investigating and reverse-engineering “miracles” performed by self-styled holy men who often claim millions of followers and amass huge wealth from donations.
One common trick they expose is levitation, usually done using an accomplice who lies on the ground under a blanket and then raises his upper body while holding out two hockey sticks under the blanket to make it look like his feet are also rising. “It’s quite easy really,” said Mr Edamaruku, who teaches members to perform the tricks in villages and then explains how they are done, or demonstrates them at press conferences.
Other simple tricks include walking on hot coals (the skin does not burn if you walk fast enough) and lying on a bed of nails (your weight is spread evenly across the bed). The “weeping statue” trick is usually done by melting a thin layer of wax covering a small deposit of water.
Some tricks require closer scrutiny. One guru in the state of Andhra Pradesh used to boil a pot of tea using a small fire on his head. The secret was to place a non-conductive pad made of compacted wheat flour between his head and the fire. “I was so excited when I exposed him. I should have been more reasonable but sometimes you get so angry,” he said. “I cried: ‘Look, even I can do this and I’m not a baba — I’m a rationalist!’.”
Another swami — who conducted funeral rites for Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister who was assassinated in 1984 — used to appear to create fire by pouring ghee, clarified butter, on to ash and then staring at the mixture until it burst into flames. The “ghee” was glycerine and the “ash” was potassium permanganate, two chemicals that spontaneously combust within about two minutes of being mixed together.
Exposing such tricks can be risky. A guru called Balti (Bucket) Baba once smashed a burning hot clay pot in Mr Edamaruku’s face after he revealed that the holy man was using a heat resistant pad to pick it up.
The chief rationalist was almost arrested by the government of Kerala for revealing that it was behind an annual apparition of flames in the night sky — in fact, several state officials lighting bonfires on a nearby hill — which attracted millions of pilgrims. Despite his efforts, he admits that people still go to the festival and continue to revere self-styled holy men.
One reason is that Indian politicians nurture and shelter gurus to give them spiritual credibility, use their followers as vote banks, or to mask sexual or criminal activity. That explains why India’s Parliament has never tightened the 1954 Drugs and Magic Remedies Act, under which the maximum punishment is two months in prison and a 2,000 rupee (£29) fine.
Another reason is that educated, middle-class Indians are feeling increasingly alienated from mainstream religion but still in need of spiritual sustenance. “When traditional religion collapses people still need spirituality,” he says. “So they usually go one of two directions: towards extremism and fundamentalism or to these kinds of people.”
Since richer, urban Indians have little time for long pilgrimages or pujas (prayer ceremonies), they are often attracted by holy men who offer instant gratification — for a fee. The development of the Indian media over the past decade has also allowed some holy men to reach ever larger audiences via television and the internet. “Small ones have gone out of business while the big ones have become like corporations,” says Mr Edamaruku.
But the media revolution has also helped Mr Edamaruku, who made 225 appearances on television last year, and gets up to 70 inquiries about membership daily. Thanks to his confrontation in 2008 with the tantric master, the rationalist is now a national celebrity, too.
When the guru’s initial efforts failed, he accused Mr Edamaruku of praying to gods to protect him. “No, I’m an atheist,” came the response. The holy man then said he needed to conduct a ritual that could only be done at night, outdoors, and after he had slept with a woman, drunk alcohol and rubbed himself in ash.
The men agreed to go to an outdoor studio that night — all to no avail. At midnight, the anchor declared the contest over. Reason had prevailed.
Jeremy Page @'The Times'
The Pentagon Loses a Skirmish with WikiLeaks
What does the Pentagon have in common with North Korea, China, Zimbabwe, and a number of private Swiss banks? They all feel threatened by WikiLeaks, the Internet service that offers whistleblowers an opportunity to publish documents that expose corruption and wrongdoing by state and private actors. This week, WikiLeaks published a 32-page secret Defense Department counterintelligence study of WikiLeaks, which suggests that the American military was preparing to (or perhaps even did) attempt to hack into and shut down the site:
(S//NF) The obscurification technology[9] used by Wikileaks.org has exploitable vulnerabilities. Organizations with properly trained cyber technicians, the proper equipment, and the proper technical software could most likely conduct computer network exploitation (CNE) operations or use cyber tradecraft to obtain access to Wikileaks.org’s Web site, information systems, or networks that may assist in identifying those persons supplying the data and the means by which they transmitted the data to Wikileaks.org.
The report expressly cites China, Israel, North Korea, Russia, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe as nations that have taken steps against WikiLeaks, and it suggests other actions that could be taken by the United States. Noting that WikiLeaks relies upon “trust as a center of gravity by protecting the anonymity and identity of the insiders, leakers or whisteblowers,” it proposes that
The identification, exposure, termination of employment, criminal prosecution, legal action against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistleblowers could potentially damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others considering similar actions from using the Wikileaks.org Web site.
What has the Pentagon so riled up? WikiLeaks published documents about U.S. equipment deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, materials on the use of certain gas agents in Iraq, and the Standard Operating Procedures for Guantánamo (SOP), which established in the minds of many critics (and legal authorities around the world) that the Bush Administration had in fact embraced practices designed to abuse or mistreat prisoners there and conceal the details of their treatment from the public and from the Red Cross. Cross-referencing the SOP against conduct reported in the NCIS investigation into the three alleged “suicides” of June 9, 2006, was, for instance, a principal tool used by researchers at Seton Hall Law School to discredit the NCIS conclusions. If those conclusions were accurate, then prison guards were engaged in systematic violation of fundamental provisions of the SOP with no disciplinary consequences.
Each of these disclosures was intensely embarrassing to the United States, leading to press coverage that tended to show that the United States was acting in conscious disregard of its legal obligations. But the Pentagon study turns this around:
Wikileaks.org is knowingly encouraging criminal activities such as the theft of data, documents, proprietary information, and intellectual property, possible violation of national security laws regarding sedition and espionage, and possible violation of civil laws. Within the United States and foreign countries the alleged ―whistleblowers‖ are, in effect, wittingly violating laws and conditions of employment and thus may not qualify as ―whistleblowers protected from disciplinary action or retaliation for reporting wrongdoing in countries that have such laws. Also, the encouragement and receipt of stolen information or data is not considered to be an ethical journalistic practice.
By this reasoning, every time a newspaper encourages a whistleblower to recount his experiences or to share a document that confirms them, the journalists are engaging in a criminal act. This suggests that the Pentagon’s copy of the U.S. Constitution is missing the First Amendment, or perhaps that the Defense Department has secured another one of those dodgy OLC memos stating that the First Amendment no longer applies to it.
The Pentagon study, which is classified “secret/noforn” is also revealing of the current Pentagon practice of classifying documents as “secret” because they would be embarrassing if published. The report draws entirely on public documents and public source materials, so nothing contained in it is in fact “secret.” In an ironic twist, the memo itself helps provide a justification for the existence of websites like WikiLeaks.
In 1960, a congressional committee, recognizing the need to rein in the extravagant claims of secrecy that were thriving in the Department of Defense and intelligence community, observed that
Secrecy—the first refuge of incompetents—must be at a bare minimum in a democratic society, for a fully informed public is the basis of self-government. Those elected or appointed to positions of executive authority must recognize that government, in a democracy, cannot be wiser than the people.
A young congressman from Illinois who supported the legislation put it just as sharply, saying that the forced disclosure of government information
will make it considerably more difficult for secrecy-minded bureaucrats to decide arbitrarily that people should be denied access to information on the conduct of government or to how a …. government official is handling his job. Public records, which are the evidence of official government action, are public property, and there should be a positive obligation to disclose this information upon request.
His name was Donald Rumsfeld.
Scott Horton @'Harpers'
Paul Bowles' 100th Birthday Party Mixtape
1. Paul Bowles - Points in Time XI
(nighttime recording of Tangiers streets)
2. Paul Bowles - Night Waltz
3. Hafiz Kani Karaca - Holy Qur'an, Baqara Surah II, 1-5
4. Cheikh Ayyad ou Haddou - Oukha Dial Kheir
5. Claude Debussy - Pour L'Egyptienne
6. Charles Trenet - Je Chante
7. Perihan Altındag-Sözeri - Haydar Haydar
8. Youbati
9. Youssou N'Dour - Tijaniyya
10. Lucienne Boyer - Parlez-moi D'Amour
11. Ryuchi Sakamoto - The Sheltering Sky (piano version)
12. Paul Bowles - Points in Time IV
(Click on Divshare logo to d/load)
Man guitarist Micky Jones RIP
Micky Jones played with Man from its formation in 1968 until ill health in 2002
Guitarist and singer Micky Jones, one of the founders of Welsh prog rock band, Man, has died aged 63.
With Merthyr Tydfil-born Jones, the band had four Top 40 UK albums from the late 1960s and toured across Europe and America, where admirers included Frank Zappa. Friend and former colleague Phil Little said Jones had a "command of melody" and was "the most humble guy".
Jones, who had been fighting a brain tumour, died at a care home in Swansea.
Mr Little, who played with Jones in the 1980s with the London-based The Flying Pigs, said Frank Zappa once described Jones as "one of the 10 best guitarists in the world".
He said: "I did hundreds of gigs with him and I never saw him have a cross word with anybody. He had maximum respect from all the musicians.
 With Micky Jones on guitar, Man had four albums in the UK UK Top 40 |
Jones' first band The Bystanders, was a Merthyr-based close harmony five-piece formed in the early 1960s, with BBC Wales radio presenter Owen Money, who was calling himself Gerry Braden, on vocals.
Money said he was "devastated" at the loss of someone who was a family friend as well as an artistic collaborator.
He said: "We came up together, we shared our life together. I know it was an inevitability but words can't express what I'm feeling at the moment.
"He taught me to play the guitar. His first job was as a hairdresser. He cut my hair.
"He was a fantastic musician. He had a "Frankie Valli" voice. We were set apart from any band in Wales at the time - we could do songs others could not do - because of his high falsetto voice.
 Micky Jones (second right) was ever-present in the band's line-up |
In 1968, after Money had moved on, the Bystanders added Deke Leonard, Jones' guitar partner for some three decades, embraced the counterculture and became Man.
They had four albums in the UK Top 40 between 1973 and 1976 and toured on continental Europe and America.
Music journalist Michael Heatley, who ran a Man fans newsletter for 20 years, said the band reached "the upper second division of British rock" but had been overlooked in the history of rock.
He said: "Man were a live band. People would go and see them because they knew that the live performance was going to be much better than the record.
Touring
"Micky was a fantastic improvisational guitarist. Deke would create the outline and Micky would "fill in the bits". The thing that kept people coming back was the he could make the guitar talk."
Man's ever-changing line-up had some 20 musicians over the years.
Jones was an ever-present member of Man, who split in 1976 and re-formed in 1983, until a brain tumour caused his departure in 2002.
He returned briefly two years later but retired from touring and spent his last years in residential care.
His son George was his immediate replacement, but he is now pursuing his own musical ideas away from Man.
He said: "I was so proud of him as a father and as a performer. To share a stage with him and be part of that legacy is one of the proudest moments."
He was buried yesterday.
Hmmm!
Cryptome.org is a venerable New York based anti-secrecy site that has been publishing since 1999. On Feb 24, 2010, the site was forcably taken down following its publication of Microsoft's "Global Criminal Compliance Handbook", a confidential 22 page booklet designed for police and intelligence services. The guide provides a "menu" of information Microsoft collects on the users of its online services. Microsoft lawyers threatened Cryptome and its "printer", internet hosting provider giant Network Solutions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA was designed to protect the legitimate rights of publishers, not to conceal scandalous internal documents that were never intended for sale. Although the action is a clear abuse of the DMCA, Network Solutions, a company with extensive connections to U.S. intelligence contractors, gagged the site in its entirety. Such actions are a serious problem in the United States, where although in theory the First Amendment protects the freedom of the press, in practice, censorship has been privatized via abuse of the judicial system and corporate patronage networks.
PDF
AKA: 'theywhoshallnotbenamedhereinaustralia'
Friday 19 March 2010
Aqualung - Strange & Beautiful (Live)
(All this listening to Big Star has made me want to listen to some perfect pop songs.
This is one.)
Actually here is another...
Actually here is another...
CIA reportedly ordered Blackwater to murder 9/11 suspect
In 2004, the CIA sent a team from the private security firm Blackwater, now Xe, to Hamburg to kill an alleged al Qaeda financier who was investigated for years by German authorities on suspicion of links to al Qaeda, according to a little-highlighted element in a Vanity Fair article to be published this month.The report cited a source familiar with the program as saying the mission had been kept secret from the German government.
"Among the team's targets, according to a source familiar with the program, was Mamoun Darkazanli, an al Qaeda financier living in Hamburg who had been on the agency's radar for years because of his ties to three of the 9/11 hijackers and to operatives convicted of the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa," writes Vanity Fair's Adam Ciralsky.
"The CIA team supposedly went in 'dark,'' meaning they did not notify their own station -- much less the German government -- of their presence; they then followed Darkazanli for weeks and worked through the logistics of how and where they would take him down," reports the magazine.
Washington authorities, however, "chose not to pull the trigger," it said.
Vanity Fair has reemerged as a powerful journalistic force in recent years, outing the long-secret "Deep Throat" source of The Washington Post's Watergate reporting.
Earlier reports revealed that the Bush Administration was considering a "targeted assassination" program -- in apparent breach of international treaties -- which would have put lethal targets on the backs of terror suspects beyond the reach of US law. The article adds that the CIA also considering taking out Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan (at left), believed to be the mastermind behind Pakistan's development of a nuclear bomb.
"Khan’s inclusion on the target list, however, would suggest that the assassination effort was broader than has previously been acknowledged," Ciralsky writes.
A source purportedly said: “They say the program didn’t move forward because [they] didn’t have the right skill set or because of inadequate cover. That’s untrue. [The operation continued] for a very long time in some places without ever being discovered. This program died because of a lack of political will.”
Berlin today denies any knowledge of the CIA operation, according to a German media outlet.
Green party parliamentarian Hans-Christian Stroebele told a local paper that it was the government's job to monitor foreign intelligence agencies operating in Germany.
"It can't be true that they knew nothing," Stroebele told the daily Hamburger Abendblatt.
Deutsche Welle, the German news source, further reports today that Federal prosecutors in Hamburg are conducting an investigation into the magazine's CIA assassination plot claims.
German authorities have previously investigated Darkazanli but never charged him; he was arrested in 2004 on a Spanish extradition request but released nine months later.
"Among the team's targets, according to a source familiar with the program, was Mamoun Darkazanli, an al Qaeda financier living in Hamburg who had been on the agency's radar for years because of his ties to three of the 9/11 hijackers and to operatives convicted of the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa," writes Vanity Fair's Adam Ciralsky.
"The CIA team supposedly went in 'dark,'' meaning they did not notify their own station -- much less the German government -- of their presence; they then followed Darkazanli for weeks and worked through the logistics of how and where they would take him down," reports the magazine.
Washington authorities, however, "chose not to pull the trigger," it said.
Vanity Fair has reemerged as a powerful journalistic force in recent years, outing the long-secret "Deep Throat" source of The Washington Post's Watergate reporting.
Earlier reports revealed that the Bush Administration was considering a "targeted assassination" program -- in apparent breach of international treaties -- which would have put lethal targets on the backs of terror suspects beyond the reach of US law. The article adds that the CIA also considering taking out Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan (at left), believed to be the mastermind behind Pakistan's development of a nuclear bomb."Khan’s inclusion on the target list, however, would suggest that the assassination effort was broader than has previously been acknowledged," Ciralsky writes.
A source purportedly said: “They say the program didn’t move forward because [they] didn’t have the right skill set or because of inadequate cover. That’s untrue. [The operation continued] for a very long time in some places without ever being discovered. This program died because of a lack of political will.”
Berlin today denies any knowledge of the CIA operation, according to a German media outlet.
Green party parliamentarian Hans-Christian Stroebele told a local paper that it was the government's job to monitor foreign intelligence agencies operating in Germany.
"It can't be true that they knew nothing," Stroebele told the daily Hamburger Abendblatt.
Deutsche Welle, the German news source, further reports today that Federal prosecutors in Hamburg are conducting an investigation into the magazine's CIA assassination plot claims.
German authorities have previously investigated Darkazanli but never charged him; he was arrested in 2004 on a Spanish extradition request but released nine months later.
Czech pot smokers exhale with relief over new drug law
Czech pot smokers have breathed a sigh of relief after the government clarified a law on drug use, turning the country into one of Europe's safest havens for casual drug users.
Under the more transparent and liberal law in effect since January, people found in possession of up to 15 grammes (half an ounce) of marijuana or growing up to five cannabis plants no longer risk prison or a criminal record, but can only be fined if caught.
"Our legislation says that possession and growing of marijuana for personal use is not a crime," said journalist Jiri Dolezal, slowly savouring a joint he just rolled with admirable expertise.
Now, "if the police find you carrying less than 15 grammes, you don't risk anything except a fine of up to 15,000 korunas (580 euros, 800 dollars)."
Dolezal has led a tireless campaign to relax the laws on "soft" drug use in the pages of Reflex, the respected magazine where he works.
The weekly even organises an annual contest for the best photo of marijuana grown by its readers, the Reflex Cannabis Cup, in this ex-communist country where one-third of all adults and half of youths under 24 years confess to having tried cannabis at least once.
The new law replaced an ambiguous one that made it a penalty to be in possession of "a larger than small amount" of marijuana.
"It will reduce contacts between youths and dealers who, sooner or later, offer them hard drugs," asserted Dolezal, puffing on what in colloquial Czech is called "brko" for "quill", or "spek" for "bacon fat".
But Karel Nespor, a doctor who heads the addiction treatment centre at Prague-Bohnice psychiatric hospital, is concerned about impact the eased law may have on health.
"One study found that the risk of heart attack is four times higher in the hour after someone smokes a marijuana joint," he recently told the Czech daily Dnes .
"Marijuana use also risks provoking 'cravings' for the drug," he said.
Adopted after years of wrangling, the new drug law also allows people to possess less than 1.5 grammes of heroin, a gramme of cocaine, up to five grammes of hashish, and five LSD blotter papers, pills, capsules or crystals.
Czechs can also legally grow up to five cannabis or coca plants or cacti containing mescaline, and possess up to 40 magic mushrooms.
If growers comply with the legal limits, possession is treated as a minor offence, while the possession of bigger amounts may result in up to six months in prison for hemp and up to a year for magic mushrooms, plus a fine.
In neighbouring Poland and Slovakia, people possessing any amount of marijuana risk ending up behind bars.
"Czech society is secular and more free, I would say," said psychologist Ivan Douda, who specialises in treating addicts. "Our laws are more tolerant and more pragmatic. We are closer to the Dutch legislation."
Cannabis use is technically illegal in the Netherlands, though the consumption and possession of under five grammes was decriminalised in 1976 . That amount is sold legally in one of 700 or so licensed Dutch "coffee" shops. Cannabis cultivation and mass retail remain illegal, and magic mushrooms were banned in 2008.
Douda, however, warned that the new law would not resolve all drug problems.
In recent years, he has traveled around the country, meeting students to raise awareness about the risks of using not only cannabis but also other drugs including tobacco and alcohol.
"Alcohol is an underestimated drug, while marijuana is overestimated and too severely criminalised," he said.
Neither Dolezal nor Douda feel the more relaxed drug law will transform their country into "an Amsterdam of the East".
"There is a difference between the approach in Amsterdam, which is more tolerant towards dealers, and that of Czech authorities, who are easier on the users," said Dolezal.
The psychologist conceded it was inevitable that cannabis lovers from neighbouring countries would come from time to time in search of "a more liberal environment."
Recently, Czech police discovered that a fast-food kiosk in Cesky Tesin/Cieszyn, a town on the Czech-Polish border, was selling Polish clients marijuana along with their French fries.
"Regulars were offered French fries as a bonus," joked local police spokeswoman Zlatuse Viackova.
@'AP'
More totally irresponsible drug reporting
One would think that the collective wisdom of the thousands of drug fiends inhabiting the San Francisco Bay Area would somehow inform the reporters and editors who produce the region's dominant daily, the San Francisco Chronicle, about the true nature of drug use.
But one would be wrong, for last Sunday, March 14, the Chronicle replenished the pernicious urban myth that teenagers and other young folks are routinely participating in pharm (or "pharma") parties with a Page One story titled "Pill Parties Give Teens Entry Into Addiction" (online the title is " 'Pharma Parties' a Troubling Trend Among Youths").
If you've read one of my six previous columns (June 15, 2006; June 19, 2006; March 25, 2008; March 26, 2008; March 23, 2009; Jan. 21, 2010) on the pharm-party myth, you may skip the lecture. But if not, it is your civic duty to sit tight and read on.
A pharm party, as such newspapers as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Boston Globe have reported, and such episodic TV shows as CSI: NY, Boston Legal, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Saving Grace have pretended, are drug bacchanalias attended by young people bringing pharmaceutical drugs they've bought or stolen. They toss these meds into a bowl and then—get this—swallow them randomly, sometimes by the handful like trail mix! (In some versions of the myth, the bowls of random drugs are called "trail mix.")
To my knowledge, no journalist has ever witnessed such random consumption of drugs by young people in a party setting, yet the story continues to get major play as if these affairs are common. (Time magazine's Carolyn Banta observed suburban New Jersey kids trading for a July 24, 2005, story about "pharming parties." But Banta's kids didn't play Russian roulette with their drugs, and she presents them as savvy druggies trading for value. "Is this generic, or is it the good stuff?" one asks another.)
The Chronicle story automatically deserves its distinction as the worst pharm-party story ever published because it arrives so late with so little to add to the hysteria. But there are a half-dozen sounder reasons it deserves the prize.
1) It defines "pharma parties" as get-togethers where kids share drugs stolen from their parents' medicine cabinets, "a known phenomenon for only a few years, experts say." This, as anyone who grew up in the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, or the 2000s knows, is false. Kids have long stolen and taken their parents' drugs.
2) It describes the most extreme pharma party as the kind where kids toss a variety of pills "blindly" into bowls and then consume them at random. Yet the reporter does not witness such an soirée nor does he interview an attendee. He attributes the existence of the extreme pharma parties to a therapist, but the only familiarity the therapist has with the parties is that he is said to have "dealt" with them.
3) It enlists into the story a youngish "addict," the 24-year-old Peter, to demonstrate that pharma parties are real, but listen carefully to what Peter says:
Those parties where kids all just dump the drugs into a bowl and take handfuls just to see what happens—just the idea of that scares me to death.
I mean, I was addicted so badly I went to heroin and crack, and even I wouldn't put my hand in a bowl and just take whatever.
Note that Peter never claims to have actually attended a pharm party. He merely expresses horror at taking drugs randomly. Smart young feller, that Peter!
4) The piece concedes that there are "no statistics" documenting how many kids attend drug-swapping parties, but then it reports the anecdotal findings of doctors at rehabilitation centers who say that 5 percent to 10 percent of their young patients have attended pharma parties. Who is surprised that 5 percent to 10 percent Bay Area kids in rehab have partied and swapped?
5) According to the Chronicle, "Pharma parties, where kids get together to share drugs pilfered from their parents' pill bottles, have been a known phenomenon for only a few years, experts say. But the phenomenon is getting worse." [Emphasis added.]
But the pharm-party myth has been with us a long time. Thanks to a tip by Slate contributor Nancy Nall Derringer back in 2008, I was able to trace its origins back to the 1960s and early 1970s, when the press called the random-drugs-in-a-bowl events "fruit salad parties" (Lowell Sun, March 30, 1966; Tucson Daily Citizen, Dec. 9, 1969; Charleston Daily Mail, March 13, 1970; Coshocton Tribune, Oct. 8, 1970; Billings Gazette, Jan. 17, 1971). Although these news stories claimed the parties were real, there was no evidence that they really took place. No names of attendees. No first-person accounts. No corroborating evidence.
6) Without a doubt, prescription drugs enjoy a high profile in today's culture. But are they all that more available to kids? Yes, the Chronicle reports, citing a study by the anti-drug propaganda outfit Partnership for a Drug-Free America. The Partnership says that 63 percent of American teens in grades 9 through 12 believe prescription drugs are easy to steal from their parents, up from 56 percent last year.
But the more reliable "Monitoring the Future" study from the University of Michigan reports otherwise. The percentage of surveyed students in 8th, 10th, and 12th grades who say non-heroin narcotics (Vicodin, OxyContin, and Percocet) are "fairly easy" or "very easy" to get is down or essentially flat (PDF) since the early 1990s. Monitoring the Future established the same availability trends for the two other classes of drugs kids might find in their parents' medicine cabinets: tranquilizers (PDF) and amphetamines (PDF). Monitoring the Future finds that self-reported use of tranquilizers and amphetamines is down or flat since the early 1990s. Non-heroin narcotics use has doubled since the early 1990s but has held flat for most of the last decade, according to the study.
So come and claim your award, my naive Chronicle colleagues. It's an aluminum bowl filled brimming with jellybeans, Pez, and Good & Plentys. Eat as much as you'd like, but at random only.
Thursday 18 March 2010
Nick Cave, Kylie Minougue, Shane MacGowan, Blixa Bargeld & The Bad Seeds - Death Is Not The End
(Thanx to Alan for an apt choice for today!)
Alex Chilton RIP!!!
Alex Chilton in an undated early photograph
Photo by The Commercial Appeal files
For nearly a decade starting in 1962, American Sound Studios in Memphis churned out hit after hit: including The Letter and Cry Like a Baby by the Box Tops (with a young Alex Chilton). By the 1980's, Chilton and Big Star, would foster a generation of rock bands. Chilton died Wednesday, March 17, 2010, in New Orleans.
Pop hitmaker, cult hero, and Memphis rock iconoclast Alex Chilton has died.
The singer and guitarist, best known as a member of '60s pop-soul act the Box Tops and the '70s power-pop act Big Star, died today at a hospital in New Orleans. Chilton, 59, had been complaining of about his health earlier today. He was taken by paramedics to the emergency room where he was pronounced dead. The cause of death is believed to be a heart attack.
His Big Star bandmate Jody Stephens confirmed the news this evening. "Alex passed away a couple of hours ago," Stephens said from Austin, Texas, where the band was to play Saturday at the annual South By Southwest Festival. "I don’t have a lot of particulars, but they kind of suspect that it was a heart attack."
The Memphis-born Chilton rose to prominence at age 16, when his gruff vocals powered Box Tops massive hit “The Letter.” The band would score several more hits, including “Cry Like a Baby” and “Neon Rainbow.”
After the Box Tops ended in 1970, Chilton had a brief solo run in New York before returning to Memphis. He soon joined forces with a group of Anglo-pop-obsessed musicians, fellow songwriter/guitarist Chris Bell, bassist Andy Hummel and drummer Jody Stephens, to form Big Star.
The group became the flagship act for the local Ardent Studios' new Stax-distributed label. Big Star’s 1972 debut album, #1 Record met with critical acclaim but poor sales. The group briefly disbanded, but reunited sans Bell to record the album Radio City. Released in 1974, the album suffered a similar fate, plagued by Stax’s distribution woes.
"I’m crushed. We’re all just crushed," said Ardent founder John Fry, who engineered most of the Big Star sessions. "This sudden death experience is never something that you’re prepared for. And yet it occurs."
The group made one more album, Third/Sister Lovers, with just Chilton and Stephens — and it too was a minor masterpiece. Darker and more complex than the band’s previous pop-oriented material, it remained unreleased for several years. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine would name all three Big Star albums to its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
In the mid-'70s Chilton began what would be a polarizing solo career, releasing several albums of material, like 1979’s Like Flies on Sherbet — a strange, chaotically recorded album of originals and obscure covers that divided fans and critics. Chilton also began performing with local roots-punk deconstructionists the Panther Burns.
In the early '80s, Chilton left Memphis for New Orleans, where he worked a variety of jobs and stopped performing for several years. But interest in his music from a new generation of alternative bands, including R.E.M. and the Replacements, brought him back to the stage in the mid-'80s.
He continued to record and tour as a solo act throughout the decade. Finally, in the early '90s, the underground cult based around Big Star had become so huge that the group was enticed to reunite with a reconfigured lineup.
"It’s obvious to anybody that listens to his live performances or his body of recorded work, his tremendous talent as a vocalist and songwriter and instrumentalist," Fry said.
"Beyond the musical talent, he was an interesting, articulate and extremely intelligent person," Fry added. "I don't think you’d ever have a conversation with him of any length that you didn’t learn something completely new."
The band, featuring original member Stephens plus Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of the Posies, continued to perform regularly over the next 16 years. Big Star became the subject of various articles, books and CD reissue campaigns, including the release of widely hailed box set, Keep an Eye on the Sky, released last year by Rhino Records.
"When some people pass, you say it was the end of an era. In this case, it’s really true," said Memphis singer-songwriter Van Duren, a Chilton contemporary in the Memphis rock scene of the '70s.
The band was scheduled to launch the spring 2010 season at the Levitt Shell at Overton Park with a benefit concert on May 15.
Big Star had not played in Memphis since a 2003 Beale Street Music Festival appearance.
Chilton is survived by his wife, Laura, and a son Timothy.
Is It Time To Stockpile “Survival Seeds”?
Are seeds the new gold? Advertisements for “survival seeds” are being run during Glenn Beck’s prime time show on Fox News, advising viewers to stockpile nonhybrid seeds rather than gold or silver. When the “politicians and bankers bring the whole thing crashing down,” you’ll be able to grow your own “crisis garden” with nutrient-rich foods to sustain your family…scary times.
Sickipedia: bid to shut offensive 'encyclopedia dramatica'
The Australian Human Rights Commission has threatened legal action against a widely read but controversial US-based website over an article that encourages racial hatred against Aborigines.
But online users' lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia said that trying to stamp out the deplorable content would only create the "Streisand" effect, whereby an attempt to censor online content only brings more attention to it.
In a letter to Joseph Evers, the owner of Encyclopedia Dramatica (ED) - a more shocking version of Wikipedia that contains racist and other offensive articles dubbed as "satire" - the commission said it had received 20 complaints from Aborigines over the "Aboriginal" page on the site.
The same page was in the news in January when, in a rare move, Google Australia agreed to remove links to the article from its search engine following legal action from Aboriginal man Steve Hodder-Watt.
On the Australian Communication and Media Authority's blacklist of "refused classification" websites, which was leaked in March last year, encyclopediadramatica.com was included. This means the entire site will most likely be blocked under the government's forthcoming internet filtering plan.
The commission argued in its letter, the first page of which was published by Evers on his website, that the article on Aborigines constituted racial hatred and was in breach of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975.
A disclaimer at the top of the article, which is too vulgar to repeat here, says it was "not racist at all" because it was written by "Australian aborigines who are satirizing racists in Australia in the same way that Sacha Baron Cohen, a jew, uses the character Borat to satirize anti-semetism [sic]".
A separate article on the site about Australia says the country is "comprised entirely of the still imprisoned distant relatives of Britain's worst criminals (tax dodging sheep f*****) and other detritus and a haven for aspiring international terrorists".
The page is illustrated with a picture of Josef Fritzl draped in an Australian flag. Fritzl was sentenced to life in prison for raping his daughter and for imprisoning her and their children over a 24-year period.
Evers had argued in an email to the commission that, because his site was hosted in the US, it was covered by the country's free speech regulations and not subject to Australian laws.
In response to this, the commission pointed to an internet defamation case heard in the High Court of Australia in 2002, in which US publisher Dow Jones was found to have defamed an Australian resident, Joseph Gutnick, in an article on Barron's Online.
The highly controversial case was settled in 2004 with Dow Jones agreeing to pay Gutnick close to $600,000 in damages.
"In this case an article on a website available from a server in the USA was held to have been published in Australia where the article was available for viewing and where the readers downloaded the story," the commission said in its letter.
"In light of this decision, it appears that the RDA [Racial Discrimination Act] is applicable to this matter."
In a blog post, prefaced with claims that Encyclopedia Dramatica was "a labor of love" and with tips for readers to "eat a few grams of highly potent mushrooms" in Chichen Itza in Mexico, Evers said he feared legal action would be brought by the commission against him personally.
"While I act in complete compliance with both the civil and criminal codes of the United States of America, and am assured the right of free speech according to our Constitution ... I can personally be jailed and fined for the violation of this law," Evers wrote.
"Encyclopedia Dramatica will never be censored in any way. We will keep publishing this content and our Australian users will be able to view it up until the point that your God-forsaken government blocks it with their soon-to-be-implemented secret list of banned material."
Evers said his lawyers had advised him never to visit his family in Sydney again or to set foot on Australian soil.
The commission refused to comment.
Colin Jacobs, spokesman for Electronic Frontiers Australia, said the article was "indefensible" but questioned whether Australian law could be used to take it down.
He said the Dow Jones v Gutnick case was different because it was a civil rather than a criminal matter and Dow Jones had paying subscribers in Australia, so was found to be publishing here.
"EFA doesn't believe that because something is on the internet it should be immune from critical examination or legal redress. Defamation and anti-hate-speech laws have a place even when applied to online content," Jacobs said.
"[But] a costly and lengthy legal battle would only give these guys more publicity, and the day the case was won, the page would pop up on a web host in another country. Trying to stamp out this fire will just cause it to spread."
Jacobs referred to the Streisand effect, named after Barbra Streisand's unsuccessful attempt to sue a photographer for $US50 million in an effort to have an aerial photograph of her mansion removed from a photo collection.
Once word of the legal action leaked out, the image spread like wildfire on the internet and hundreds of thousands more people ended up seeing it than had originally been the case.
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