Monday's Long Song
2 hours ago
Monday, 20 December 2010
On-U Sound news
Adrian Sherwood announces 12 re-issues and 4 new albums (African Head Charge, Little Axe, Lee Perry and a compilation album with all female vocalists) in 2011, the year that On-U Sound has been in business for 30 years.
(Thanx mARCO!)
Why Shouldn’t Freedom of the Press Apply to WikiLeaks?
Here’s a thought experiment: Imagine for a moment that the quarter of a million secret government cables from the State Department had been leaked, not to Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, but to Bill Keller, the executive editor of the New York Times.
First, let’s state the obvious: The Times would never have returned the confidential files to the Obama administration. Most likely, the newspaper would have attempted to engage with State to try to scrub life- and source- threatening details from the cables — as Assange and his lawyers did.
And if the administration had refused to participate in that effort -- as it did with WikiLeaks? The Times would have done what any serious news organization has the imperative to do: It would have published, at a pacing of its own choosing, any cable it deemed to be in the public interest. In this digital age, it’s likely the Times would have even created a massive searchable database of the cables.
The optics of the information dump would likely have been very different -- overlaid with the Times’ newspaper-of-record gravitas. But the effect would have been identical: Information that the U.S. government finds embarrassing, damning, and even damaging would have seen the light of day.
Now let’s extend the thought experiment:
How would you react if top American conservatives were today baying for Bill Keller’s blood? If Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had called on Keller to be prosecuted as a “high-tech terrorist”? If Sarah Palin were demanding that Keller be hunted down like a member of Al Qaeda? If Newt Gingrich were calling for the Times editor to be assassinated as an “enemy combatant.”
What if Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, had successfully pressured the Times’ web hosting company to boot the newspaper off its servers? What if Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal suddenly stopped processing subscriptions for the paper?
Imagine that students at Columbia University’s graduate school of international affairs had been warned not to Tweet about the New York Times if they had any hopes of ever working at the State Department.
Imagine U.S. soldiers abroad being told that they’d be breaking the law if they read even other news outlets’ coverage of the Times’ exclusives.
Imagine that the Library of Congress had simply blocked all access to the New York Times site.
You can’t imagine this actually happening to the New York Times. Yet this has been has been exactly the federal and corporate response to Assange and WikiLeaks.
The behavior is outrageous on its face and totalitarian in its impulse. Indeed, we should all be alarmed at the Orwellian coloring of the Obama administration’s official response to the publishing of the cables:
“President Obama supports responsible, accountable, and open government at home and around the world, but this reckless and dangerous action runs counter to that goal.”
Secrecy is openness. What the fuck?!
Listen: You don’t have to approve of Assange or his political views; you can even believe he’s a sex criminal. It doesn’t matter. What’s at stake here isn’t the right of one flouncy Australian expat to embarrass a superpower. It’s freedom of the press. And it’s a dark day for journalists everywhere when the imperatives of government secrecy begin to triumph over our First Amendment.
First, let’s state the obvious: The Times would never have returned the confidential files to the Obama administration. Most likely, the newspaper would have attempted to engage with State to try to scrub life- and source- threatening details from the cables — as Assange and his lawyers did.
And if the administration had refused to participate in that effort -- as it did with WikiLeaks? The Times would have done what any serious news organization has the imperative to do: It would have published, at a pacing of its own choosing, any cable it deemed to be in the public interest. In this digital age, it’s likely the Times would have even created a massive searchable database of the cables.
The optics of the information dump would likely have been very different -- overlaid with the Times’ newspaper-of-record gravitas. But the effect would have been identical: Information that the U.S. government finds embarrassing, damning, and even damaging would have seen the light of day.
Now let’s extend the thought experiment:
How would you react if top American conservatives were today baying for Bill Keller’s blood? If Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had called on Keller to be prosecuted as a “high-tech terrorist”? If Sarah Palin were demanding that Keller be hunted down like a member of Al Qaeda? If Newt Gingrich were calling for the Times editor to be assassinated as an “enemy combatant.”
What if Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, had successfully pressured the Times’ web hosting company to boot the newspaper off its servers? What if Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal suddenly stopped processing subscriptions for the paper?
Imagine that students at Columbia University’s graduate school of international affairs had been warned not to Tweet about the New York Times if they had any hopes of ever working at the State Department.
Imagine U.S. soldiers abroad being told that they’d be breaking the law if they read even other news outlets’ coverage of the Times’ exclusives.
Imagine that the Library of Congress had simply blocked all access to the New York Times site.
You can’t imagine this actually happening to the New York Times. Yet this has been has been exactly the federal and corporate response to Assange and WikiLeaks.
The behavior is outrageous on its face and totalitarian in its impulse. Indeed, we should all be alarmed at the Orwellian coloring of the Obama administration’s official response to the publishing of the cables:
“President Obama supports responsible, accountable, and open government at home and around the world, but this reckless and dangerous action runs counter to that goal.”
Secrecy is openness. What the fuck?!
Listen: You don’t have to approve of Assange or his political views; you can even believe he’s a sex criminal. It doesn’t matter. What’s at stake here isn’t the right of one flouncy Australian expat to embarrass a superpower. It’s freedom of the press. And it’s a dark day for journalists everywhere when the imperatives of government secrecy begin to triumph over our First Amendment.
Tim Dickinson @'Rolling Stone'
Interesting:
"I think he just has a tendency to follow the path of highest resistance, simply for the sake of defiance."
Daniel Assange on his father 2006
Daniel Assange on his father 2006
Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band - Funeral Hill (Outtake)
An outtake from The Spotlight Kid sessions
Don Van Vliet a/k/a Captain Beefheart--vocals, harp
Elliot Ingber (Winged Eel Fingerling) and Bill Harkleroad (Zoot Horn Rollo)--guitars
Mark Boston (Rockette Morton)--bass
Artie Tripp (Ed Marimba)--drums
Words and music by Don Van Vliet
Bradley Manning's Life Behind Bars
The last time Bradley Manning saw the world outside of a jail, most Americans had never heard of WikiLeaks. On Friday, Manning, the man whose alleged unauthorized release of hundreds of thousands of classified documents put the website and its controversial leader, Julian Assange, on the map, turns 23 behind bars. Since his arrest in May, Manning has spent most of his 200-plus days in solitary confinement. Other than receiving a card and some books from his family, his birthday will be no different. In an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, his attorney, David Coombs, revealed key details about Manning’s imprisonment and kind gestures from his family that provided a bit of comfort in the inmate's otherwise extremely harsh incarceration.
“They’re thinking about him on his birthday, that they love and support him,” Coombs said of Manning's family and the card his mother, father, sister and aunt passed along via the lawyer on Wednesday. “They wish they could be with him on his day, but they are not allowed because visitation is only on Saturday and Sunday, and a family member would be going down to see him on Saturday.” Coombs passed a message to Manning from his aunt on behalf of the family; Manning, the lawyer says, asked Coombs to tell his aunt he loved her and wishes he could be with her as well...
Continue reading
Denver Nicks @'The Daily Beast'
Sunday, 19 December 2010
Pilots of the future: suicide prevention and the internet
Samaritans founder Chad Varah was that most British of things: an old-fashioned gentleman with a pronounced enthusiasm for the modern world. Besides his work in suicide prevention, he promoted progressive attitudes towards sex education in Picture Post, and was the astronautical consultant to Dan Dare, the “Pilot of the Future” whose exploits thrilled the readers of the Eagle. So it is fair to say he would have approved of the latest innovation by Samaritans: a box with the organisation's helpline number (08457 90 90 90) that appears at the top of the page in response to searches for terms relating to suicide on Google UK.
It has been there since November 2010: a small change, but a significant one. This is not by any means the organisation's first foray into cyberspace—that came as far back as 1992 with the piloting of the jo@samaritans.org email address—but it represents an important advance in the way Samaritans engages with the public, and an indication that it is keen to address the challenges posed by a future spent more and more online.
The first of these challenges will be to bring some sense of rationality and proportion to the ongoing discussion about the role of the internet. Although the perception of the online environment as something novel is wearing off for adults—and is probably a source of complete bafflement to teenagers—its involvement, however tenuous, in any episode of self-harm, suicide, illness, or violence guarantees intense media interest. And behind these stories lurks the assumption—made in the absence of any solid evidence—that the use of the internet, and specifically social networking sites, is intrinsically damaging. In 2009, for example, the UK Sunday Telegraph ran an interview with the Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols: it was reported that the Archbishop “warned that the sites are contributing to a trend for teenagers to put too much importance on the number of friends they have and that this can ultimately lead to suicide...”
Continue reading
Niall Boyce @'The Lancet'
The WIRE Records of the Year 2010
01 Actress - Splazsh
02 Oneohtrix Point Never - Returnal
03 Swans - My father will guide me up a rope to the sky
04 Joanna Newsom - Have one on me
05 Catherine Christer Hennix - The electric harpsichord
06 Rangers - Suburban tours
07 Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before today
08 John Tilbury & Sebastian Lexer - Last daylight
09 Keith Fullerton Whitman - Disengenuity/Disengenuousness
10 Kevin Drumm - Necro acoustic
11 Sun City Girls - Funeral mariachi
12 Annette Krebs & Taku Unami - Motobachii
13 Sun Araw - On patrol
14 Gonjasufi - A sufi and a killer
15 Big Boi - Sir Lucious Left Foot
16 Joe Colley - Disasters of self
17 Richard Skelton - Landings
18 Emeralds - Does it look like I'm here?
19 Eleh - Location momentum
20 Autechre - Oversteps
21 Helena Gough - Mikroklimata
22 Demdike Stare - Liberation through hearing
23 Marina Rosenfeld - Plastic materials
24 Bill Orcutt - Way down south
25 Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma
26 Bellows - Handcut
27 Tilbury/Duch/Davies - Conrenius Cardew: Works 1960-1970
28 Hype Williams - s/t
29 Laurie Anderson - Homeland
30 Konono No 1 - Assume crash position
31 Zs - New slaves
32 Phew - Five finger discount
33 Sabbathh Assembly - Restored to one
34 Derek Bailey - More 74
35 Seijaku - Mail from Fushitsua
36 Tyler the Creator - Bastard
37 Moon Wiring Club A spare tabby at the cat's wedding
38 Larry Polansky - The world's largest melody
39 Alasdair Galbraith - Mass
40 Jailbreak - The Rocker
41 oOoOO - oOoOO
42 Pedestrian Deposit - East fork/North fork
43 Group Inerane - Guitars from Agadaz vol 3
44 Prins Thomas - s/t
45 These New Puritans - Hidden
46 Aldo Clementi - Works with flutes
47 Graham Lambkin & Jason Lescalleet - Air supply
48 Joseph Hammer - I love you, please love me too
49 Joshua Abrams - Natural information
50 Grinderman 2
Saturday, 18 December 2010
Portlandia
Having lived in Portland for 3 years before moving to Seattle, this is funny for all the right reasons...
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