Sunday, 16 January 2011
Iain Sinclair: The Raging Peloton
Triggered by an archive clip of his maternal grandfather, Herbert Morrison, another ennobled socialist cabinet minister, Mandelson launched into a memoir of cycling around Hendon, committee room to polling station, bearing leaflets, carrying messages as proudly as the freshly baked loaves in Ridley Scott’s celebrated commercial, shot in 1973, on the picturesque slopes of Shaftesbury. Carl Barlow, the youth who featured in the advertisement, underscored by the slow movement of Dvorak’s Symphony No 9, arranged for brass, went on to become a fireman in East Ham. And, presumably, to find himself caught up in the aggravations of the Thatcher period, the climate of economic belt-tightening and union-bashing. Lord Tebbit’s helpful remarks, delivered to a sea of grey heads, at Blackpool in 1981, in the aftermath of the Handsworth and Brixton riots, will have carried a special charge for Barlow. ‘On yer bike!’...
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Swiss whistleblower Rudolf Elmer plans to hand over offshore banking secrets of the rich and famous to WikiLeaks
British and American individuals and companies are among the offshore clients whose details will be contained on CDs presented to WikiLeaks at the Frontline Club in London. Those involved include, Elmer tells the Observer, "approximately 40 politicians".
Elmer, who after his press conference will return to Switzerland from exile in Mauritius to face trial, is a former chief operating officer in the Cayman Islands and employee of the powerful Julius Baer bank, which accuses him of stealing the information.
He is also – at a time when the activities of banks are a matter of public concern – one of a small band of employees and executives seeking to blow the whistle on what they see as unprofessional, immoral and even potentially criminal activity by powerful international financial institutions.
Along with the City of London and Wall Street, Switzerland is a fortress of banking and financial services, but famously secretive and expert in the concealment of wealth from all over the world for tax evasion and other extra-legal purposes.
Elmer says he is releasing the information "in order to educate society". The list includes "high net worth individuals", multinational conglomerates and financial institutions – hedge funds". They are said to be "using secrecy as a screen to hide behind in order to avoid paying tax". They come from the US, Britain, Germany, Austria and Asia – "from all over".
Clients include "business people, politicians, people who have made their living in the arts and multinational conglomerates – from both sides of the Atlantic". Elmer says: "Well-known pillars of society will hold investment portfolios and may include houses, trading companies, artwork, yachts, jewellery, horses, and so on."
"What I am objecting to is not one particular bank, but a system of structures," he told the Observer. "I have worked for major banks other than Julius Baer, and the one thing on which I am absolutely clear is that the banks know, and the big boys know, that money is being secreted away for tax-evasion purposes, and other things such as money-laundering – although these cases involve tax evasion."
Elmer was held in custody for 30 days in 2005, and is charged with breaking Swiss bank secrecy laws, forging documents and sending threatening messages to two officials at Julius Baer.
Elmer says: "I agree with privacy in banking for the person in the street, and legitimate activity, but in these instances privacy is being abused so that big people can get big banking organisations to service them. The normal, hard-working taxpayer is being abused also.
"Once you become part of senior management," he says, "and gain international experience, as I did, then you are part of the inner circle – and things become much clearer. You are part of the plot. You know what the real products and service are, and why they are so expensive. It should be no surprise that the main product is secrecy … Crimes are committed and lies spread in order to protect this secrecy."
The names on the CDs will not be made public, just as a much shorter list of 15 clients that Elmer handed to WikiLeaks in 2008 has remained hitherto undisclosed by the organisation headed by Julian Assange, currently on bail over alleged sex offences in Sweden, and under investigation in the US for the dissemination of thousands of state department documents.
Elmer has been hounded by the Swiss authorities and media since electing to become a whistleblower, and his health and career have suffered.
"My understanding is that my client's attempts to get the banks to act over various complaints he made came to nothing internally," says Elmer's lawyer, Jack Blum, one of America's leading experts in tracking offshore money. "Neither would the Swiss courts act on his complaints. That's why he went to WikiLeaks."
That first crop of documents was scrutinised by the Guardian newspaper in 2009, which found "details of numerous trusts in which wealthy people have placed capital. This allows them lawfully to avoid paying tax on profits, because legally it belongs to the trust … The trust itself pays no tax, as a Cayman resident", although "the trustees can distribute money to the trust's beneficiaries".
Now, Blum says, "Elmer is being tried for violating Swiss banking secrecy law even though the data is from the Cayman Islands. This is bold extraterritorial nonsense. Swiss secrecy law should apply to Swiss banks in Switzerland, not a Swiss subsidiary in the Cayman Islands."
Julius Baer has denied all wrongdoing, and rejects Elmer's allegations. It has said that Elmer "altered" documents in order to "create a distorted fact pattern".
The bank issued a statement on Friday saying: "The aim of [Elmer's] activities was, and is, to discredit Julius Baer as well as clients in the eyes of the public. With this goal in mind, Mr Elmer spread baseless accusations and passed on unlawfully acquired, respectively retained, documents to the media, and later also to WikiLeaks. To back up his campaign, he also used falsified documents."
The bank also accuses Elmer of threatening colleagues.
Ed Vulliamy @'The Guardian'
What happens when an entire country legalizes drug use?
In the end, there was no way to ignore the problem, and no way for politicians to spin it, either. Young people across Portugal were injecting themselves with heroin. HIV and Hepatitis C infection rates were soaring. And Casal Ventoso, a neighborhood in Lisbon, had become a dark symbol of this small nation’s immense drug problem. Junkies openly injected themselves in the street, dirty syringes piled up in the gutters, alleyways reeked of garbage and human waste, and no one seemed to care.
“Welcome to Lisbon’s drugs supermarket,” a police officer said to a visitor in 2001, surveying the daily depravity with a shrug. But João Goulão, Portugal’s drug czar, admits now that the police officer was probably understating it. “Casal Ventoso,” Goulão said recently, “was the biggest supermarket of drugs in Europe.”
Faced with both a public health crisis and a public relations disaster, Portugal’s elected officials took a bold step. They decided to decriminalize the possession of all illicit drugs — from marijuana to heroin — but continue to impose criminal sanctions on distribution and trafficking. The goal: easing the burden on the nation’s criminal justice system and improving the people’s overall health by treating addiction as an illness, not a crime.
As the sweeping reforms went into effect nine years ago, some in Portugal prepared themselves for the worst. They worried that the country would become a junkie nirvana, that many neighborhoods would soon resemble Casal Ventoso, and that tourists would come to Portugal for one reason only: to get high. “We promise sun, beaches, and any drug you like,” complained one fearful politician at the time...
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Keith O'Brien @'The Boston Globe'
HA!
LipstickSpice Susan Spiaggia
I got RayOVac instead of Duracell & now the vibrator is all "Do you even know me?" I really don't need this drama.
Timothy Leary on the Culture of Secrecy
Largely because of his advocacy of psychedelic drugs, Tim Leary became a high-profile political prisoner whom Nixon called "the most dangerous man in America" (the same label Nixon used to describe Daniel Ellsberg). Leary was sentenced to ten years in prison for possession of .0025 grams of cannabis.
After escaping from prison in 1970, he became the object of an international manhunt. Finally captured in Afghanistan, he was kidnapped by the CIA - there was no extradition treaty between the two countries - and brought back to face four more years in prison, including long stretches in solitary confinement, before he was released in 1976. The following is an excerpt from a text he wrote in maximum-security Folsom Prison, California, in May 1973 - Michael Horowitz
After escaping from prison in 1970, he became the object of an international manhunt. Finally captured in Afghanistan, he was kidnapped by the CIA - there was no extradition treaty between the two countries - and brought back to face four more years in prison, including long stretches in solitary confinement, before he was released in 1976. The following is an excerpt from a text he wrote in maximum-security Folsom Prison, California, in May 1973 - Michael Horowitz
Secrecy is the original sin. The fig leaf in the Garden of Eden. The basic crime against love. The issue is fundamental. What a blessing that Watergate has been uncovered to teach us the primary lesson. The purpose of life is to receive, synthesize and transmit energy. Communication-fusion is the goal of life. Any star can tell you that. Communication is love. Secrecy, withholding the signal, hoarding, hiding, covering up the light is motivated by shame and fear, symptoms of the inability to love. Secrecy means that you think love is shameful and bad. Or that your nakedness is ugly. Or that you hide unloving, hostile feelings. Seeds of paranoia and distrust.
Before the FBI there were no secret police. Before World War II there was no CIA and America was much less concerned with secrecy. The hidden sickness has become lethally epidemic in the last forty years. They say primly: if you have done nothing wrong, you have no fear of being bugged. Exactly. But the logic goes both ways. Then all FBI files and CIA dossiers and White House conversations should be open to all. Let everything hang open. Let government be totally visible.
The last, the very last people to hide their actions should be the police and the government.
We operate on the assumption that everyone knows everything, anyway. There is nothing and no way to hide. This is the acid message. We're all on cosmic TV every moment. We all play starring roles in the galactic broadcast, This is Your Life. I remember the early days of neurological uncovering, desperately wondering where I could go to escape. Run home, hide under the bed, in the closet, in the bathroom? No way. The relentless camera "I" follows me everywhere. We can only keep secrets from ourselves.
None of the legal experts get the point of Watergate. The Special Prosecutor for the Watergate scandal chasing leaks from his own staff.
We recall the political scandals involving secrets. The heroic figures around whom Washington now revolves: Dan Ellsberg and Tony Russo. Brave Russian dissenters uncovering the secrets that everyone knows about Soviet repression.
Now comes the electronic revolution. Bugging equipment effective at long distance. I laugh at government surveillance. Let the poor, deprived, bored creatures listen to our conversations, tape our laughter, study our transmissions. Maybe it will all turn them on.
Concealment is the seed-source of every human conflict. Let's forget artificial secrets and concentrate on the mysteries.
Written in Folsom Prison, California, May 1973. Excerpted from the original version published in Neuropolitics, Starseed/Peace Press, 1977.
Written in Folsom Prison, California, May 1973. Excerpted from the original version published in Neuropolitics, Starseed/Peace Press, 1977.
'Old Boy' director makes movie on iPhone
Lee Jung-hyun
Acclaimed South Korean film director Park Chan-wook is wielding a new cinematic tool: the iPhone.Park, director of the internationally known "Old Boy," ''Lady Vengeance" and "Thirst," said Monday that his new fantasy-horror film "Paranmanjang" was shot entirely on Apple Inc.'s iconic smartphone.
"The new technology creates strange effects because it is new and because it is a medium the audience is used to," Park told reporters Monday.
"Paranmanjang," which means a "life full of ups and downs" in Korean, is about a man transcending his current and former lives. He catches a woman while fishing in a river in the middle of the night. They both end up entangled in the line and he thinks she is dead.
Suddenly, though, she wakes up, strangles him and he passes out. When the woman awakens him, she is wearing his clothing and he hers. She cries and calls him "father."
The movie, made on a budget of 150 million won ($133,000), was shot using the iPhone 4 and is slated to open in South Korean theaters on Jan. 27. Park made the 30-minute film with his younger brother Park Chan-kyong, also a director.
Park Chan-wook's "Old Boy," a blood-soaked thriller about a man out for revenge after years of inexplicable imprisonment, took second place at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. His vampire romance "Thirst" shared the third-place award at Cannes in 2009.
Park Chan-kyong said that a wide variety of angles and edits were possible because numerous cameras could be used.
"There are some good points of making a movie with the iPhone as there are many people around the world who like to play and have fun with them," Park Chan-wook said. Compared to other movie cameras, the iPhone was good "because it is light and small and because anyone can use it," he said.
He said the directors attached lenses to their phones and nothing was particularly different from shooting a regular movie.
Lee Jung-hyun, who plays the woman, said the film has a bit of everything.
Though it is a short film with a running time around 30 minutes it "mixes all elements from horror and fantasy to some humor," she said.
@'AP'
Alvin Tofler's 'Future Shock' narrated by Orson Welles (1972)
Techno Panics From Forty Years Ago...
Via
Trish Keenan's Mind Bending Motorway Mix
HERE
Via
Saturday, 15 January 2011
RIP Trish Keenan
Trish Keenan died on 14 January 2011 from complications with pneumonia. Broadcast’s record label Warp said: “This is an untimely tragic loss and we will miss Trish dearly - a unique voice, an extraordinary talent and a beautiful human being. Rest in Peace.”
♪♫ Silver Convention - Fly Robin Fly (1975)
Best remembered for their disco smash "Fly Robin Fly," the Munich, Germany-based ensemble Silver Convention was formed by producers Silvester Levay and Michael Kunze, debuting in 1975 with the LP Save Me and scoring a U.K. hit with the title track. After topping the American charts with "Fly Robin Fly," Levay and Kunze recruited a trio of vocalists -- Linda Thompson (not to be confused with the same-named singer and wife of guitarist Richard Thompson), Ramona Wulf, and Penny McLean -- who began appearing publicly under the Silver Convention banner; they were featured on the follow-up, "Get Up and Boogie (That's Right)," which was also a smash in 1976. While another single, "Telegram," proved a success that same year in the annual Eurovision Song Contest, Silver Convention's popularity quickly faded, and by the end of the decade the group was no more. (Jason Ankeny)
Germany's answer to the Love Unlimited Orchestra
Jesus, what dresses, what moves, those were the days...
Probably my last post here if mona discovers this :)
Bonus:
Get up and Boogie 1975
listen to the lyrics...
This file photo shows Chinese troops patrolling a snowy hillside on Shuangmu Mountain bordering North Korea, in late Nineties. China is in discussions with N.Korea about stationing its troops in the isolated state for the first time since 1994, according to a South Korean newspaper.
China to station troops in N. Korea
evgenymorozov Evgeny Morozov
Neocons would love to claim that leaked cables ("information") triggered protests in Tunisia but they can't afford to applaud Assange. Ouch
Friday, 14 January 2011
Brisbane begins clean-up
Australia's third largest city, Brisbane, has begun to clean up mud and debris in some areas, as floodwaters begin to recede.
As levels fall, residents are starting to see the full scale of the damage. At least 30,000 properties in the city have been swamped.Meteorologists have warned that the threat of further cyclones remains.
Floods have surged through Queensland since last month, killing at least 19 people and displacing thousands more.
Where waters have receded in the city centre, residents have had to heave sticky mud out of their houses. Officials have said the clean-up could take months.
The Brisbane River has fallen two metres since peaking at 4.46m (14.6ft) just before 0530 local time on Thursday (1930 GMT Wednesday).
Power has been restored to 170,000 homes in Brisbane, but power company Energex said 66,000 homes across south-east Queensland remained without electricity.
Meanwhile, floods continue to move southwards towards the neighbouring state of New South Wales, threatening more towns.
'Help your friends'
Queensland state Premier Anna Bligh called for a spirit of cooperation in communities.
"There is a lot of heartache and grief as people start to see for the first time what has happened to their homes and their streets," she said."In some cases we have street, after street after street where every home has been inundated to the roof level affecting thousands of people.
"I encourage people please to make an effort to help your friends, help your families."
Earlier, she warned that the state was facing a reconstruction task of "post-war proportions".
Rubbish collectors have reappeared on the city's streets, while Mayor Campbell Newman called for individuals or businesses with bulldozers and other equipment to help clear roads.
"The big priority this morning and through the day is to try and get the roads open. Clean the debris and the silt off the roads and get them open," he said.
The BBC's Phil Mercer in Brisbane says that while falling water levels will give some respite, the city now faces a huge reconstruction effort, and that some of those who have been displaced may never be able to return to their homes.
There are also 55 people reported missing, and authorities have grave concerns for a dozen of those people, our correspondent says.
'Unchartered territory'
The floodwaters are now testing the levees in the Queensland hamlet in Goondiwindi, a town of 6,000. The warning has lead to the evacuation of hospitals and nursing homes.
"We are expecting this [levee] to hold but we are in unchartered territory," Mayor Graeme Scheu said.In Brisbane, the worst-hit suburbs included Brisbane City, St Lucia, West End, Rocklea and Graceville.
Brisbane airport survived the swell and remains open, with almost all flights unaffected. However, passengers are advised to check before travel.
On Friday, the national weather bureau warned that above-average cyclone activity was expected to last until March. A storm in the Coral Sea is being monitored, and threatens to bring more rain, it said.
The weeks of rain have been blamed on a La Nina weather pattern in the Pacific.
@'BBC'
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