Friday 23 April 2010
Charles Burn's 'Black Hole' comes alive
A collaborative series with photographer Max Oppenheim and prosthetic artist Bill Turpin in tribute to Charles Burns for his comic ‘Black Hole’. Within this series specific bespoke prosthetic’s were modeled and cast for each individual model. With careful consideration to wardrobe, lighting and style to ‘Black Hole’. The Operators set about finalising the shot within retouch, developing specific colour styles and prosthetic enhancement for each individual shot. The series can be seen in it’s full glory in print within 125 magazine. Go treat yourself to a copy, click me.
HA!
(Click to enlarge)
Nick Clegg: Don't mention The War. Grow Up
Article from 2002 that sent the Daily Mail into spazz mode yesterday
Article from 2002 that sent the Daily Mail into spazz mode yesterday
Wingnut media attacks Obama over $100 bill redesign
All about the Benjamins
I’m pretty sure that the new $100 bills will produce some kind of wingnut freakout.Then, a few hours later, on the Drudge Report:
The most obvious angle is “they look like European money!”, but we may also see some chatter about jack-booted Federal thugs coming to take back all the old hundreds.
Also too, it’s a lot tougher to counterfeit a chicken than to counterfeit a piece of paper.
They're just too easy. You can pre-mock them now.
Jed Lewison @'Daily Kos'
Tory council candidates physically attack John Prescott's team in London
I have just been told that two female Labour volunteers were knocked to the ground in a scuffle in Poplar after they were attacked by two men in Prescott masks. Their identities were allegedly subsequently revealed as Tory council candidates, one of whom is allegedly called Martin Coxall, who is now in police custody.
From a Labour source:
From a Labour source:
Two men barged the crowd around John Prescott in Poplar on his walkabout and hit one of our female volunteers and knocked her to the ground and barged another female volunteer knocking her to the ground. Their masks were pulled off and they are Tory council candidates. One of the men is Martin Coxall who was taken away in hand-cuffs by the police.From John Prescott on Twitter:
Tory council candidate in Poplar Martin Coxall attacked two women in scuffle trying to get me. Expect this from BNP not ToriesUPDATE: Labour's local candidate for Poplar and Limehouse, Jim Fitzpatrick has said: ''This was appalling and disgraceful behaviour by two of David Cameron's Conservative candidates who acted like hooligans. This kind of behaviour has no place in British politics and I will be writing to David Cameron to ask him to take appropriate action.''
Dick Morris: Bill Clinton Personally Orchestrated the 1993 Waco, Texas Tragedy
It looks like somebody is going to have to update the Waco Siege page on Wikipedia. Apparently the whitewashed history that former President Bill Clinton would like us to believe regarding the 1993 federal assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, is missing important details regarding his own personal involvement.
In response to Bill Clinton’s highly publicized linking of the Tea Party movement to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing in an op-ed piece for the New York Times, former Clinton adviser Dick Morris disclosed on Monday that it was Clinton himself, and not Attorney General Janet Reno, as Americans have been led to believe for the past 17 years, who called the shots during the 1993 botched invasion that led to the death of seventy-six people.
Speaking on the Hannity program on the Fox News Network, Morris criticized Clinton for his Oklahoma City comments: “Let’s understand what was Timothy McVeigh’s motivation …he himself had said that it was the reaction to the Waco takeover. Bill Clinton orchestrated that takeover.”
Morris went on to say, “Clinton in fact was so ashamed about what he did in Waco that he was not going to appoint Janet Reno to a second four-year term. She told him in a meeting right before the inauguration day … ‘If you don’t appoint me I’m going to tell the truth about Waco.’ And that forced Clinton’s hand … It’s never been said (publicly) before.”
For years, Clinton has been criticized for his leadership of the federal government during the Waco crisis, but he has managed to escape personal responsibility for the tragedy. With Morris’s statements, it appears this may no longer be possible. It would seem that Clinton was far more intimately involved with the government response at Waco than previously reported.
While there may be a link between Clinton and the Oklahoma City bombing, I would hardly blame the actions of a psychopath on any one individual or political party.
However, for Clinton to associate such a horrible act of violence with freedom loving Americans, especially given the fact that he must be fully aware that it was his decisions that led to the Waco catastrophe which in turn inspired Timothy McVeigh, is remarkably shameless.
Fred Dardick @'Canada Free Press'
General Election 2010: Billy Bragg pledges to support Liberal Democrats
Going to have to digeast that one a bit further, are the LibDems really a better alternative?
Money quote from Mr. Bragg:
'Asked for his thoughts on the General Election, Bragg replied cryptically: ''I think it's like a big wobbly sausage and a really strange pair of trousers and the sausage sticking out of the front of the trousers. ''And people saying: 'I don't know, is that a sausage sticking out of those trousers or is it a ----?'''
Thursday 22 April 2010
Coca Colla hopes to create a buzz in Bolivia
But it is not the drink with similar effect and a similar name you might think it is.
An unlikely newcomer has made the world of soft drinks a little more crowded: Bolivia has started producing a new fizzy drink using the coca leaf.
It is called "Coca Colla" after the Colla people, the Andean tribes who cultivate coca in the areas bordering Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.
For some a matter of indigenous pride, for others another sign of Bolivia's growing anti-US feelings, this humble local initiative has set its sights on competing domestically with giants such as Coca-Cola and Red Bull.
 |   I started making the drink at home, based on my beloved but otherwise reviled coca leaf and outsourcing the bottling process  Coca Colla creator Victor Ledezma |
The leaf is a key element in the Andean people's culture and economy. However, it is also cocaine's raw material.
That association with drugs is a motivating influence on the drink's creator Victor Ledezma.
"I want to get to the whole world with my coca-leaf-based drink," says Ledezma, a coca farmer from El Chapare region in central Bolivia.
"Coca has a lot of potential … this can change the image of Bolivia as being a drug-trafficking country," he believes.
According to Mr Ledezma, Bolivia's new ally, Iran, has already expressed an interest, having ordered two million bottles.
And some countries in the region, members of the left-wing Alba bloc - mainly Venezuela and Paraguay - are considering not only importing, but also financing Mr Ledezma's project.
"I've developed my own secret formula. I started making the drink at home, based on my beloved but otherwise reviled coca leaf and outsourcing the bottling process," Mr Ledezma says.
"Now we are building a plant in Santa Cruz and aiming to have investments for at least $1m. That's for a start. The whole world should know that coca, besides from its good taste, is good for body and the soul," Mr Ledezma adds.
Kicking ingredient
|  This is great for Bolivia and will be great for the coca leaf, because then people won't only talk just about the negative side of coca-derived products Bolivian government source |
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, an Italian entrepreneur, Angelo Mariani, sparked a revolution with his coca-based wine, 'Vin Mariani'.
The drink offered "health, strength, energy and vitality" and was even awarded official recognition by one of its consumers and fans, the then Pope Leo XIII.
Most recently, coca leaves seem to be among the elements in the formula of the Red Bull Cola energy drink.
But most famously, coca leaves helped to give the kick in Coca-Cola's original formula. The company dropped cocaine from its recipe more than 100 years go, but the secret formula still calls for a cocaine-free coca extract.
The Coca-Cola Company is said to import eight tons of coca leaves from South America each year, mainly from Peru.
"The coca leaf has three alkaloids. Extracted from the leaf and concentrated into cocaine with chloride, the coca alkaloid is highly stimulating and, potentially, very addictive," explains Dr Jorge Hurtado, a local psychiatrist and coca expert who heads the International Coca Research Institute.
"However, the small dose present naturally, and unprocessed, in coca leaves provides only a slight energising sensation and it is not addictive; it carries less of a kick than a cup of coffee.
"The same applies to the Coca Colla or other coca-based products like toothpaste, flours or sweets," Dr Hurtado adds.
Trade ban
Even so, with the notable exception of Coca-Cola, most products using coca leaves are banned in most nations beyond the Andes by strict trade regulations.
 President Morales chewed coca leaves at the UN while campaigning against a ban |
And it would also require modifying the current local law, which prevents exports of any product derived from the coca plant.
Bolivian President Evo Morales has yet to indicate whether the law will change.
But Mr Morales, himself a coca grower, has fought for the rights of coca growers and called for the United Nations to lift the ban on coca, criticising the US for its opposition to any change.
Yet Bolivian law currently allows only 12,000 hectares of coca plants to be planted and its purposes must be traditional - for chewing, for tea and for use in indigenous rituals.
But with widespread plans of industrialisation of the shiny green leaf, Mr Morales is pushing to increase the area used to grow coca to 20,000 hectares.
In reality, coca cultivation is far greater than that. A recent report published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime states that, in 2008, approximately 30,200 hectares of coca were under cultivation in two out of the country's nine departments.
The reality is that coca leaves fetch far higher prices than most food crops and cultivation is hard to resist for farmers in one of South America's poorest countries.
The government's hope is that, by supporting coca's other uses, it will help some farmers avoid the temptation of cocaine trade. It says legal coca production makes enough to support 300,000 people.
A government source told the BBC that they were in the final stages of analysing the product and would soon provide financial support to its producers.
"The aim is to provide greater social benefits to producers and suppliers of the raw material.
"This is great for Bolivia and will be great for the coca leaf, because then people won't only talk just about the negative side of coca-derived products", the source said.
"And there's more to it than that. This is a matter of national pride. Soon, people will stop talking about 'God, Country and Coca-Cola'; they'll be talking of '[Andean Goddess] Mother Earth, Bolivia and Coca Colla.'"
Andres Schipani @'BBC'
'Commom Sense' by Scurvy Bastard
To the Young Britons, dissatisfied with years of a failed New Labour and considering voting Tory for a change. Back in the 80s the contents of your diapers was the same thing that Thatcher was feeding the country, smirking all the while as her party idolized her. Things haven't changed and won't until you figure out how to change them. Repeating the same mistake over and over again is the definition of insanity.
Illustrations by Ralph Steadman
Birthday Party - Junkyard
(Thanx Michael!)
(I was very lucky enough to see the Birthday Party's second gig in London due to the fact that Tracey Pew (and Nick Cave?) were staying with friends of mine when they first came across to the UK.)
One of the greatest live bands of all time...
Guru's family deny authenticity of final words
The family of rapper Guru, who died earlier this week, have issued a statement refuting the former GangStarr man's ability to write down or communicate any final words in the run-up to his death.
As previously reported, immediately after Guru's death on Monday, his producer Solar issued a statement and a letter purporting to be the rapper's final wishes, which included the desire for Solar to bring up his son KC and run his charitable organisation, and a particularly vitriolic rant against his former GangStarr partner, DJ Premier.
However, the rapper's family say that they were not aware of any such charity being in operation, and claim that Guru had been in a coma since suffering a heart attack in February, so could not have written, or even dictated, the letter. Nor could he have issued the statement released via Solar in March assuring fans that he was recovering well.
The family's statement revealed: "Guru suffered from multiple myeloma for over a year. Accrued complications from this illness led to respiratory failure and cardiac arrest. As a result, Guru was in a coma from mid-February until his death and never regained consciousness. Early on the morning of 19 Apr, he became hypertensive due to low blood pressure. He again went into cardiac arrest and slipped away from us. Guru died far too young but he was, and we are, proud of all his many legendary musical contributions. The family is not aware of any foundations established by Guru".
Numerous members of the hip hop community, plus fans and critics were already questioning the validity of the letter supposedly written by Guru on his deathbed, and this statement will only fuel the animosity towards Solar. The producer himself said earlier this week that those who do not believe that the note was written by Guru have a "wicked agenda".
Meanwhile, DJ Premier issued his own statement yesterday, though refused to be drawn into the controversy surrounding Guru's death (although a few lines could be seen as subtle digs at Solar). Premier wrote: "I've been asked to comment on a letter speaking ill of me, which was supposedly written by Guru in his dying days. All I will say about it is that our time together was beautiful, we built a hip hop legacy together, and no one can re-write history or take away my love for him. One thing I would never do is play around with the truth about his life"
Who cares?
Melbourne Storm stripped of premierships for salary cap breaches
(...but it is nice to see that a sporting body actually has punished a club a little more than a slap on the wrist!)
(...but it is nice to see that a sporting body actually has punished a club a little more than a slap on the wrist!)
A Picture of 9/11 Is Not a Thing to Put on Your Truck
"14" and "88" are significant #s in the white power movement. "14" refers to the "white words" (we must secure the resistance of our race for the future of our children); and the "88" refers to "heil hitler."
But! The state of VA encourages anyone to report an offensive license plate....and you can do it online here:
[www.dmv.virginia.gov]
But! The state of VA encourages anyone to report an offensive license plate....and you can do it online here:
[www.dmv.virginia.gov]
Those naughty boys
Revolution Muslim taken down after posting this picture of Theo van Gogh and asking if Matt Stone & Trey Parker had forgotten it...
Pop stars branch out into graphic novels
It was autumn 2007 and I was surveying the queue outside Forbidden Planet, which was spiralling round the block
The cult entertainment department store just off Covent Garden was normally a quiet place: geeky adult males wrapped around Star Trek paraphernalia, engrossed in the latest Garth Ennis tome or eyeing up the limited edition Street Fighter figurines. But that day was different. A sea of figures dressed in black threatened to engulf the whole building. It was a blur of skeleton hoodies and faces hidden beneath layers of kohl eyeliner and hennaed hair, as scores of scowling teenagers lined the pavement. They were waiting for a chance to meet their hero. “OH. MY. GOD. I can’t believe I’m going to TOUCH HIM!” screamed the excited tween girl beside me, half-Avril Lavigne, half-Emily the Strange. Her friends squealed with delight.
The “him” she was going to touch? My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way, who was there to sign copies of his first graphic novel, The Umbrella Academy. My Chemical Romance were the band responsible for taking the musical genre “emo” into the mainstream, via the bedroom walls of millions of adoring fans. The same decadent storytelling that saw MCR sell 2m copies of their third album, The Black Parade, was seen in The Umbrella Academy. The tale of former superheroes struck a chord with many of those who found solace in Way’s outcast lyrics. The six-part series of comics also managed to persuade the snootier echelons of the comic book world – who were sceptical about a singer-turned-comic book author – that Way was the real deal. The singer attended the School of Visual Arts in New York as well as interning at DC Comics before he formed MCR.
The success of the series has also opened the door for musicians to utilise graphic novels as never before. “I’m pretty sure it got into the hands of people who had never read comics before, or who just had a passing interest,” says Shawna Gore, an editor from Dark Horse Comics who published The Umbrella Academy. “It was a bridge between pop music and comics.”
That bridge has become more apparent in 2010 with two significant album releases set to feature graphic novel tie-ins. In pop culture terms, the timing seems right, with music fans still craving big aesthetic experiences in spite of the downsizing of the music industry. The evidence is everywhere, from Lady Gaga’s headline-baiting frocks to musicians turning to the outré world of opera to fulfil their creative needs (Björk is the latest pop star to announce that she is penning a libretto, a 3D “science musical” with French director Michel Gondry). “As well as this aesthetic need that comics fulfil, they play another role,” Gore says. “Musicians are able to tell the same stories they tell in song via the medium of comics. It’s a natural extension of songwriting.”
The link between comic books and pop music stretches all the way back to the 1960s with the Archies and Yellow Submarine but, in recent years, alternative musical genres and the graphic novel have been bedfellows, peaking with Tank Girl artist Jamie Hewlett’s collaboration with Damon Albarn on the virtual Gorillaz project. “Historically it’s been tied to punk rock and heavy metal,” says Gore. “Kiss had a range of comics in the 1970s, Alice Cooper did a graphic novel with [author] Neil Gaiman and Danzig’s Glenn Danzig was a comics publisher for a couple of years in the 1990s. So I think there’s always been that attraction. As people become more confident in their creative endeavours, they grow legs and they are open to other possibilities creatively.”
This is certainly the case with Amanda Palmer. The former Dresden Dolls chanteuse has just released an album under the pseudonym Evelyn Evelyn, and the album/graphic novel allowed her to stretch her wings creatively. “I achieved a lot of success with The Dresden Dolls and solo, but now I’ve hit a place that’s sort of a midlife artist crisis, where I’m really re-assessing what I’m doing and why. Creating an album and graphic novel seemed like a logical step,” she says.
The Evelyn Evelyn project finds Palmer and musical partner Jason Webley donning the guise of a pair of conjoined twin sisters. “They are joined at the side and share three legs and a liver,” she says. The girls’ story also provided perfect fodder for the graphic novel treatment. “The material on the record is very visual. The songs are like mini radio plays.”
It also provided Palmer with something that other creative outlets could not. “It opens up one’s imagination with certain types of images and art in a way nothing else does.” On disc, their disturbing tale (filled with tales of entrapment and hinting at abuse) is told with gallows humour, but translating it on to paper was more challenging. “The story is told from the point of view of innocent children but it’s really dark. You’re telling the facts as kids see them but you’re also including adult perspectives, that was what we had to think about.”
The album might be released soon but the Evelyn Evelyn graphic novel will not be out until October. The lavish two-book package, which will feature an introduction from Palmer’s fiancé Neil Gaiman, seems like a relic of a time gone by. For Palmer, this is the products’ unique selling point. “It’s going to be a beautiful, tangible piece of art itself. In today’s world it was important for us to create something you could hold in your hands and not just watch on a screen,” she says. As Shawna Gore says, “graphic novels allow musicians to have more autonomy over the formats in which they work.”
It’s a sentiment that musician Melissa Auf Der Maur agrees with. She is set to release Out Of Our Minds, a multimedia project (album, film and graphic novel) that deals with “an eternal female force on a hunt for the heart and it’s in all of us, and it’s lived for all time”. For Auf Der Maur, former member of Smashing Pumpkins and Hole, she saw the graphic novel as a perfect way to expound on these themes. “I was attracted to the graphic novel because it allowed me to explore the language of fantasy; of the subconscious and dreams.” The rock world and comic world, she says, have similar mindsets. “There’s a huge crossover in terms of people who are comic book fans and rock music fanatics.”Indeed the iconography Auf Der Maur uses to tell her non-linear tale (vikings, blood and witches) are ones that are common to the world of rock too. “Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath referred to [that imagery] because the original ‘heavy metal’ was mysticism, so I returned to the original route.” She asked Jack Forbes, a recent graduate from the School of Visual Arts, to create the wordless, comic accompaniment to her album. “I didn’t use words because it was all about the power of the visual that we wanted to communicate. Like music, the comic form transcends words,” she says, echoing Amanda Palmer’s comments.
“I showed Jack the fluid movements, the ‘frames within frames’ form of graphic novels which appealed to me and we used that. It was a very peaceful process compared with being on the film set recreating a car crash or being in a studio with loud music.”
Is the pairing up of the graphic novel and the album the future? Palmer isn’t so sure. “As artists are getting cleverer about capitalising on their releases, some will do some groundbreaking stuff with graphic novels. But for others, it won’t make sense. Sure you may see the pop star du jour putting one out but that doesn’t mean it’s this great new thing. I’d love to read what a brilliant mind like Robyn Hitchcock would do in the genre but, to be honest, I don’t know if I’d want to see the Beyoncé graphic novel.”
The cult entertainment department store just off Covent Garden was normally a quiet place: geeky adult males wrapped around Star Trek paraphernalia, engrossed in the latest Garth Ennis tome or eyeing up the limited edition Street Fighter figurines. But that day was different. A sea of figures dressed in black threatened to engulf the whole building. It was a blur of skeleton hoodies and faces hidden beneath layers of kohl eyeliner and hennaed hair, as scores of scowling teenagers lined the pavement. They were waiting for a chance to meet their hero. “OH. MY. GOD. I can’t believe I’m going to TOUCH HIM!” screamed the excited tween girl beside me, half-Avril Lavigne, half-Emily the Strange. Her friends squealed with delight.
The success of the series has also opened the door for musicians to utilise graphic novels as never before. “I’m pretty sure it got into the hands of people who had never read comics before, or who just had a passing interest,” says Shawna Gore, an editor from Dark Horse Comics who published The Umbrella Academy. “It was a bridge between pop music and comics.”
That bridge has become more apparent in 2010 with two significant album releases set to feature graphic novel tie-ins. In pop culture terms, the timing seems right, with music fans still craving big aesthetic experiences in spite of the downsizing of the music industry. The evidence is everywhere, from Lady Gaga’s headline-baiting frocks to musicians turning to the outré world of opera to fulfil their creative needs (Björk is the latest pop star to announce that she is penning a libretto, a 3D “science musical” with French director Michel Gondry). “As well as this aesthetic need that comics fulfil, they play another role,” Gore says. “Musicians are able to tell the same stories they tell in song via the medium of comics. It’s a natural extension of songwriting.”
The link between comic books and pop music stretches all the way back to the 1960s with the Archies and Yellow Submarine but, in recent years, alternative musical genres and the graphic novel have been bedfellows, peaking with Tank Girl artist Jamie Hewlett’s collaboration with Damon Albarn on the virtual Gorillaz project. “Historically it’s been tied to punk rock and heavy metal,” says Gore. “Kiss had a range of comics in the 1970s, Alice Cooper did a graphic novel with [author] Neil Gaiman and Danzig’s Glenn Danzig was a comics publisher for a couple of years in the 1990s. So I think there’s always been that attraction. As people become more confident in their creative endeavours, they grow legs and they are open to other possibilities creatively.”
This is certainly the case with Amanda Palmer. The former Dresden Dolls chanteuse has just released an album under the pseudonym Evelyn Evelyn, and the album/graphic novel allowed her to stretch her wings creatively. “I achieved a lot of success with The Dresden Dolls and solo, but now I’ve hit a place that’s sort of a midlife artist crisis, where I’m really re-assessing what I’m doing and why. Creating an album and graphic novel seemed like a logical step,” she says.
The Evelyn Evelyn project finds Palmer and musical partner Jason Webley donning the guise of a pair of conjoined twin sisters. “They are joined at the side and share three legs and a liver,” she says. The girls’ story also provided perfect fodder for the graphic novel treatment. “The material on the record is very visual. The songs are like mini radio plays.”
It also provided Palmer with something that other creative outlets could not. “It opens up one’s imagination with certain types of images and art in a way nothing else does.” On disc, their disturbing tale (filled with tales of entrapment and hinting at abuse) is told with gallows humour, but translating it on to paper was more challenging. “The story is told from the point of view of innocent children but it’s really dark. You’re telling the facts as kids see them but you’re also including adult perspectives, that was what we had to think about.”
The album might be released soon but the Evelyn Evelyn graphic novel will not be out until October. The lavish two-book package, which will feature an introduction from Palmer’s fiancé Neil Gaiman, seems like a relic of a time gone by. For Palmer, this is the products’ unique selling point. “It’s going to be a beautiful, tangible piece of art itself. In today’s world it was important for us to create something you could hold in your hands and not just watch on a screen,” she says. As Shawna Gore says, “graphic novels allow musicians to have more autonomy over the formats in which they work.”
 |
“I showed Jack the fluid movements, the ‘frames within frames’ form of graphic novels which appealed to me and we used that. It was a very peaceful process compared with being on the film set recreating a car crash or being in a studio with loud music.”
Is the pairing up of the graphic novel and the album the future? Palmer isn’t so sure. “As artists are getting cleverer about capitalising on their releases, some will do some groundbreaking stuff with graphic novels. But for others, it won’t make sense. Sure you may see the pop star du jour putting one out but that doesn’t mean it’s this great new thing. I’d love to read what a brilliant mind like Robyn Hitchcock would do in the genre but, to be honest, I don’t know if I’d want to see the Beyoncé graphic novel.”
Priya Elan @'Financial Times'
All we are is bust in the wind...
I'm tempted to say that this research is full of hot air. But that would be giving in to the easy pun.
(It would indeed Audiozobe, so I am so glad you didn't LOL! - Mona)
(It would indeed Audiozobe, so I am so glad you didn't LOL! - Mona)
Environmental psychology studies have found evidence that wind speed has a strong influence on mood and comfort. This study investigated the relationship between wind speed and daily stock market returns across 18 European countries from 1994 to 2004. A significant and pervasive wind effect was found on stock returns. This finding was supported by psychological literature claiming that mood affects judgement and decision-making in situations involving uncertainty and risk, and coincides with the argument of misattribution. This investigation also found strong seasonality effect and temperature effect in European stock markets. Specifically, the influence of wind on stock returns is demonstrated to be more significant than that of sunlight, indicating that wind might exert a stronger impact on mood than sunshine and hence be a better proxy for mood than sunshine. Above all, our findings contradict the rational asset-pricing hypothesis and contribute to the behavioural finance literature.
Hui-Chi Shu & Mao-Wei Hung'@'Informaworld'
(via @'Improbable Research' of course)
Cooking with your TV: germs, microbes, ad nauseam!
Hmm. Don't know who they watched for this study, but I know someone who's had some experience with a local TV cooking host, and she was not too well received when she pointed all the sanitary failures of the show to the producer she contacted. I wonder why?
“Television food and cooking programs were recorded and reviewed, using a defined list of food safety practices based on criteria established by Food Safety Network researchers…. When negative food handling behaviors were compared to positive food handling behaviors, it was found that for each positive food handling behavior observed, 13 negative behaviors were observed. Common food safety errors included a lack of hand washing, cross-contamination and time-temperature violations.”
Marc Abrahams @'ImprobableResearch'
Skinjet your way into the future.
Apart from the medical applications which are obviously plentiful, this device has another neat advantage: suddenly, the Lovecraftian ideal of an evil book bound in human leather doesn't seem quite as repulsive...
Via @'Bioephemera'
No Blood For Opium
It was common during the opening of the Iraq war to see slogans proclaiming “No blood for oil!” The cover story for the war – Saddam’s links with Al Qaida and his weapons of mass destruction – were obvious mass deceptions, hiding a far less palatable imperial agenda. The truth was that Iraq was a major producer of oil and, in our age, the Age of Oil, oil is the most strategic resource of all. For many it was obvious that the real agenda of the war was an imperialistic grab for Iraqi oil. This was confirmed when Iraq’s state-owned oil company was privatised to western interests in the aftermath of the invasion.
Why then are there no slogans saying “No blood for opium!”? Afghanistan’s major product is opium and opium production has increased remarkably during the present war. The current NATO action around Marjah is clearly motivated by opium. It is reported to be Afghanistan’s main opium-producing area. Why then won’t people consider that the real agenda of the Afghan war has been control of the opium trade?
The weapons of mass deception tell us that the opium belongs to the Taliban and that the US is fighting a war on drugs as well as terror. Yet it remains a curious fact that the opium trade has tracked across Southern Asia for the past five decades from east to west, following US wars, and always under the control of US assets.
In the 1960s, when the US fought a secret war in Laos using the Hmong opium army of Vang Pao as its proxy, Southeast Asia produced 70% of the world’s illicit opium. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Afghanistan production, controlled by US-backed drug lords, took off, till it rivalled Southeast Asian production. Since 2002, Afghan opium production, encouraged by both the Taliban and US-backed drug lords, has reached 93% of world illicit production, an unparalleled performance.
The graph below from the UN World Drug Report 2008 shows the astonishing increase in Afghan opium production that followed the US invasion.
In the 1980s the US supported Islamic fundamentalists, the Mujahideen, against the Soviets in Afghanistan. To pay for their war, the Mujahideen ordered peasants to grow opium as a revolutionary tax. Across the border in Pakistan, Afghan leaders and local syndicates, under the protection of Pakistani Intelligence, operated hundreds of heroin labs. As the Golden Crescent in Southwest Asia eclipsed the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia as the centre of the heroin trade, it sent rates of addiction spiralling in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and the Soviet Union.
To hide US complicity in the drug trade, Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officers were required to look away from the drug-dealing intrigues of the US allies and the support they received from Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) and the services of Pakistani banks. The CIA’s mission was to destabilise the Soviet Union through the promotion of militant Islam inside the Central Asian Republics and they sacrificed the drug war to fight the Cold War. Their mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets. Knowing the drug war would hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union, the CIA facilitated the operation of anti-Soviet rebels in the provinces of Uzbekistan, Chechnya and Georgia. Drugs were used to finance terrorism and western intelligence agencies used their control of drugs to influence political factions in Central Asia.
The Soviet army withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, leaving a civil war between the US-funded mujahideen and the Soviet-supported government that raged until 1992. In the chaos that followed the mujahideen victory, Afghanistan lapsed into a period of warlordism in which opium growing thrived.
The Taliban emerged from the chaos, dedicated to removing the war lords and applying a strict interpretation of Sharia law. They captured Kandahar in 1994, and expanded their control throughout Afghanistan, capturing Kabul in 1996, and declaring the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
Under the policies of the Taliban government, opium production in Afghanistan was curbed. In September 1999, the Taliban authorities issued a decree, requiring all opium-growers in Afghanistan to reduce output by one-third. A second decree, issued in July 2000, required farmers to completely stop opium cultivation. Ordering the ban on opium growing, Taliban leader Mullah Omar called the drug trade “un-Islamic”.
As a result, 2001 was the worst year for global opium production in the period between 1990 and 2007. During the 1990s, global opium production averaged over 4000 tonnes. In 2001, opium production fell to less than half this amount. Although it was not admitted by the Howard government, which claimed the credit itself, Australia’s 2001 heroin shortage was due to the Taliban.
Following the attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre on 11 September 2001, the armies of the northern alliance, led by US Special Forces, supported by daisy cutters, cluster bombs and bunker-busting missiles, shattered the Taliban forces in Afghanistan. The opium ban was lifted and, with CIA-backed warlords back in control, Afghanistan again became the major producer of opium. Despite the official denials, Hillary Mann Leverett, a former US National Security Council official for Afghanistan, confirmed that the US knew that government ministers in Afghanistan, including the minister of defence in 2002, were involved in drug trafficking.
After 2002 Afghan opium production rose to unheard of levels. By 2007, Afghanistan was producing enough heroin to supply the entire world. In 2009, Thomas Schweich, who served as US state department co-ordinator for counter-narcotics and justice reform for Afghanistan, accused President Hamid Karzai of impeding the war on drugs. Schweich also accused the Pentagon of obstructing attempts to get military forces to assist and protect opium crop eradication drives.
Schweich wrote in the New York Times that “narco-corruption went to the top of the Afghan government”. He said Karzai was reluctant to move against big drug lords in his political power base in the south, where most of the country’s opium and heroin is produced.
The most prominent of these suspected drug lords was Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai. Ahmed Wali Karzai was said to have orchestrated the manufacture of hundreds of thousands of phony ballots for his brother’s re-election effort in August 2009. He was also believed to have been responsible for setting up dozens of so-called ghost polling stations — existing only on paper — that were used to manufacture tens of thousands of phony ballots. US officials have criticised his “mafia-like” control of southern Afghanistan. The New York Times reported that the Obama administration had vowed to crack down on the drug lords who permeate the highest levels of President Karzai’s administration, and they pressed President Karzai to move his brother out of southern Afghanistan, but he refused to do so.
“Karzai was playing us like a fiddle,” Schweich wrote. “The US would spend billions of dollars on infrastructure development; the US and its allies would fight the Taliban; Karzai’s friends could get richer off the drug trade. Karzai had Taliban enemies who profited from drugs but he had even more supporters who did.”
But who was playing who like a fiddle?
Was it the puppet President or the puppet masters who installed him?
As Douglas Valentine shows in his history of the War on Drugs, The Strength of the Pack, this never-ending war has been a phony contest, an arm wrestle between two arms of the US state, the DEA and the CIA; with the DEA vainly attempting to prosecute the war, while the CIA protects its drug-dealing assets.
During the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, European powers (chiefly the UK) and Japan used the opium trade to weaken and subjugate China. During the Twenty-First century, it seems that the opium weapon is being used against Iran, Russia and the former Soviet republics, which all face spiralling rate of addiction and covert US penetration as the Afghan War fuels central Asia’s heroin plague.
John Jiggens @'Disinformation'
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