Taliban on Twitter for Afghan Internet age

Video response to 'Kitty is a very BAD Mystic' by Billy Bragg

ioerror Jacob Appelbaum 
The US empire is really on the decline and it shows. It's too bad that my country is being turned into an authoritarian surveillance state...

Sometimes I wonder if I'd be "better off" living outside of the US but what's worse? Foreign or domestic American policy? Sad truths there...
I am reminded of the phrase: "If not you, who? If not now, when?" Leaving is letting the bastards win. Fuck that noise; this is my country...

Alexander Trocchi - A Life In Pieces

(BBC Scotland documentary that includes interviews with William S. Burroughs, Leonard Cohen and Terry Southern. Excerpt from Jamie Wadhawan's 'Cain's Film' lastly)

Man at leisure
Stewart Home: 
Walk On Gilded Splinters: IN MEMORANDUM TO MEMORY 13 APRIL 1969. Alex Ttocchi's State of Revolt at the Arts Lab in London 

The mid-sixties poetry extravaganza that posthumously became known as "Wholly Communion" after the film Peter Whitehead made about it is often viewed as acting as midwife to the emergent hippie culture in London. To some "Wholly Communion" was the last and greatest hurrah of the London beatnik scene, its fabulous death rattle, while for others it was the birth cry of psychedelia. Regardless of which view you take, for most of the seven thousand punters who trooped into the Albert Hall on 11 June 1965, "Wholly Communion" was a spectacular success. That said, the individual poetry readings were less inspiring than their ability to attract a huge crowd, since even the appearance of beat stalwart Allen Ginsberg was viewed as disappointing. More spectacularly, the British visionary poet and acidhead Harry Fainlight was singularly unable to complete a recital of his own work. Likewise, depending on which historical commentator is taken at their word, the British beat novelist and ungentlemanly junkie Alex Trocchi either succeeded admirably or failed miserably in his role as MC. Regardless, "Wholly Communion" is now a mythical event in the annals of the British counterculture, the first mass gathering of the tribes, and no recent history of London in the swinging sixties appears complete without its reverential invocation.

By way of contrast, the zombification of the British counterculture at the end of the sixties has for too long remained a taboo subject. Fittingly enough it was the "Wholly Communion" MC who acted as chief somnambulist at the London Arts Lab slumber party of Sunday 13 April 1969 that exposed the 'Age of Aquarius' as a complete non-starter. This, the apotheosis of post-hippie burn out, was promoted to an indifferent public as "Alex Trocchi's State Of Revolt". The evening featured among others Trocchi, William Burroughs, R. D. Laing and Davy Graham. What went down during the "State Of Revolt" wasn't as immediately horrific as the murder of Meredith Hunter at the Rolling Stones' Altamont concert, or as self-consciously staged as the "Death Of Hippie" happening organised by the San Francisco Diggers or the even the Manson murders; and it is precisely this that makes Trocchi's 1969 Covent Garden debacle such an iconic event. "The State Of Revolt" marks the onset of countercultural rigor mortis and this living death occurred not with a bang but a smacked out whimper. It is also a death with implications that we won't fully comprehend until the chatter of neo-critical production about the sixties ceases to mask the violent silence that lies at the core of that decade, and which will yet prove to be its most enduring legacy.

While smackheads failed to constitute a majority among those present at "The State Of Revolt", both punters and participants shuffled through the Arts Lab looking like re-animated corpses intent on eating living human brains. And I say that knowing my mother who was present had been a vegetarian, as well as a junkie, since the mid-sixties. Footage of this Arts Lab death ritual makes up a good portion of the documentary "Cain's Film" (1969) by director Jamie Wadhawan; and my mother Julia Callan-Thompson is visible in four separate audience shots. My mother was actually on the hippie trail in India from the beginning of 1968 until the summer of 1969, but she made at least one lightning trip back to Europe during her sojourn to the East. Both she and a number of her boyfriends were heavily involved in Trocchi's drug dealing, and this probably accounts for her presence in the audience at "The State Of Revolt". Although opium was readily available in India, heroin was harder to come by and so this more powerful sedative was highly prized by those my mother hung out with in Goa, all of whom returned to Europe strung out. They also had an omnivorous appetite for LSD.

I sent a copy of "Cain's Film" to native New Yorker Lynne Tillman because after arriving in Europe straight from Hunter College, she'd asked Jim Haynes if she could put on a lecture series at the Arts Lab and he not only agreed but immediately suggested it should feature Trocchi. Tillman, who went on to become America's greatest living novelist, quickly lost organisational control of the lecture to Trocchi who was determined to transform it into a junkie jamboree. Being new to London, Tillman knew virtually nothing about Trocchi at the time she first contacted him, and was unaware of his reputation as a dope fiend. On 28 February 2004, Lynne emailed the following observations about the DVD she'd received from me: "it's the weirdest thing to watch - and sad and I can't find the words - much of it was shot in the basement cinema after I had to move everyone downstairs out of Theatre 1 or 2 by 10pm to let the play go on, whatever it was…" The Tale Of Atlantis Rising was advertised in the underground press as taking place in the theatre spaces, while there was a screening of The Magnificent Ambersons in the cinema prior to it being overrun by Trocchi's horde of bloodsucking freaks. Tillman concluded this email by saying: "I remember many faces… if I watched it with Jim H(aynes)., he'd remember more names… several of the women are very familiar to me, none was a close friend - seeing Lynn Trocchi and the children was deeply upsetting - and seeing their apt. was so weird and sad and empty - one of the strangest experiences seeing a night and remembering and not..."

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(My BIG thanx to Stewart Home and Marc Campbell!)

(REpost)

In the late 70's/early 80's I was a fairly frequent visitor to Bernard Stone's 'Turret Bookshop' in Covent Garden and one day Jeff Nuttall was also there and I started talking to him about his book 'Bomb Culture'. In the course of the conversation I mentioned Alex Trocchi to him and was told that he was still alive and living in Holland Park and could be found sometimes in a pub whose name I have now forgotten.
(I must admit I thought that he had died years before.)

 I had first read 'Cain's Book' while still in Glasgow and even went up to the Mitchell Library one dayto see what I could find out about him and there was nothing there. Very strange as Trocchi was responsible through his magazine 'Merlin' (published in Paris between 1952 - 55) of publishing Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet and Eugene Ionesco amongst others in English for the first time.

At this time 'Cains Book' could be picked up pretty easily as could 'Young Adam' and you could visit his publisher John Calder's offices and pick up some of his other books. But as far as getting his Olympia Press 'pornography' well...I do remember Pat Kearney trying to sell me a copy of one of them for a very expensive price (though nothing like the price he sold his collection to Princeton University for here).

Anyway I remember heading up to Kensington one day and in the pub in question I met (The Rt. Hon.) George Rodney, definitely a 'shady' character but he pointed out that I was sitting under a cartoon of Trocchi on the pub's wall and that Trocchi himself would be in soon.

At this time I had an idea to do an interview with him (I had vague plans of putting a magazine together) and to this end I had already spoken with Kathy Acker about Trocchi's influence on her work, but like many things at this time in my life it got put on the back burner.

Truth be told my life was just spinning out of control and I decided to piss off somewhere.
(Anywhere as long as it wasn't the UK!)

At my last night party (29th April 1984) in London my good friend Mike came and told me that Trocchi had died a couple of weeks previously.

I ended up in Amsterdam knowing one person there and was immediately given a barge to live on (Trocchi readers will recognise the symbolism) and within a couple of weeks I had met Olaf Stoop and he gave me copies of everything that Trocchi had written including a 1954 Olympia Press 'Young Adam'. (I say 'gave' but he actually charged me 100 guilders which is practically the same thing.)

 I also met Hansmartin Tromp on one of my first days in Amsterdam who had just conducted an interview with Trocchi (for H.P.) and he also gave me a  copy of the transcript as well as some 10X8 photos of Trocchi.

I also picked up a signed copy of 'Helen & Desire' (inscribed for Richard Neville) and some of the original 'sigma' mimeographs as well as the first chapter of 'The Long Book' (featuring 'The Sexistensialist') that was published in Dan Richter's 'Residu' magazine.

Considering how few people knew of him way back then it is heartening to have seen the resurgence of interest in him and his work particularly in the last few years.

(As an aside when I was working at a record shop in Kentish Town ('Honky Tonk') in about 1981 I put up in the window a photostat of an article on Trocchi from a very early edition of 'Time Out' and it was amazing how many people said that they didn't know the writer but that they were interested in his ideas.)

Finally there is a really good BBC Scotland documentary (see above) on Alex Trocchi called 'A Life In Pieces' made by Tim Niel and Allan Campbell who were also responsible for the book of the same name. (Mention must also go to 'The Edinburgh Review' (who published a special Trocchi edition) and Andrew Murray Scott (who had worked for Trocchi towards the end of his life) who published a biography and a Trocchi 'reader' and this perhaps started the ball rolling which allowed the bankrolling of the film of 'Young Adam' which starred Tilda Swinton and Ewan McGregor.)

UPDATE:

About a year ago a(n ex) friend mislaid/liberated my first edition copy of the Olympia Press version of Young Adam that was quite different to the later version by 'virtue' of the fact that it had been padded out with 'salacious extras' to appeal to Girodias's 'DB' customers of the time.

Hands off Alexander Trocchi!

sigma: A Tactical Blueprint 

A Revolutionary Proposal: Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds

Man at work

Bonus: Davy Graham excerpt from 'Cain's Film'

Postscript:

My lil'sister actually managed to get her hands of one of the BBC mastercopies of 'Life In Pieces' which  I still have in storage but if anyone has full versions of Wadhawan's 'Cain's Film' and 'Marijuana Marijuana' to share would they please get in touch.

Thanx!

David Cameron's adviser says health reform is a chance to make big profits

Health secretary Andrew Lansley is likely to be placed under further pressure by the comments of Mark Britnell to private equity investors. Photograph: David Jones/PA

A senior adviser to David Cameron says the NHS could be improved by charging patients and will be transformed into a "state insurance provider, not a state deliverer" of care.
Mark Britnell, who was appointed to a "kitchen cabinet" advising the prime minister on reforming the NHS, told a conference of executives from the private sector that future reforms would show "no mercy" to the NHS and offer a "big opportunity" to the for-profit sector.
The revelations come on the eve of an important speech by the prime minister on the future of the NHS, during which he is expected to try to allay widespread fears that the reforms proposed in health secretary Andrew Lansley's health and social care bill would lead to privatisation.
It has been suggested that Cameron may even announce an extension to the "pause" in the progress of the bill until after the party conference season, amid growing tensions on the issue within the coalition government.
Nick Clegg, has insisted that the Liberal Democrats will not support any reforms that allow the "profit motive to drive a coach and horses through the NHS". Backbench Tory MPs, however, have called for the government to stick to the reforms and open the provision of services to the private sector. Britnell's comments will inevitably raise the temperature of the debate.
Britnell, a former director of commissioning for the NHS, who is now head of health at the accountancy giant KPMG, was invited to join a group of senior health policy experts, described by the respected Health Studies Journal as a "kitchen cabinet", in Downing Street earlier this month. The group, which includes former NHS executives and the former Department of Health permanent secretary Lord Crisp, was assembled by Cameron's new special adviser on health, Paul Bate.
In unguarded comments at a conference in New York organised by the private equity company Apax, Britnell claimed that the next two years in the UK would provide a "big opportunity" for the for-profit sector, and that the NHS would ultimately end up as a financier of care similar to an insurance company rather than a provider of hospitals and staff.
According to a glossy brochure summarising the conference held last October, Britnell told his audience: "GPs will have to aggregate purchasing power and there will be a big opportunity for those companies that can facilitate this process … In future, the NHS will be a state insurance provider, not a state deliverer." He added: "The NHS will be shown no mercy and the best time to take advantage of this will be in the next couple of years." Writing in the Health Studies Journal, Britnell also suggested that the NHS would be better served by breaking with the mantra that all services should be free at the point of delivery by allowing co-payment, where patients share the costs of care and drugs.
"It appears that countries that have a mixed blend of public and private provision, co-payment and social insurance are possibly more capable of providing resilient healthcare systems."
The shadow health secretary, John Healey, said: "This revelation comes direct from Cameron's inner circle and gives the game away on the government's NHS plans. It confirms the Tories' true purpose is to set up a free-market NHS and open up all parts of the health service to private companies."
In a move that will pile more pressure on Lansley, the Department of Health last week released the latest Mori poll on satisfaction levels with the NHS. It shows that 66% of people questioned believed the NHS was the best health service in the world, while 37% of the public expected services to deteriorate following the reforms. However, nearly three-quarters said that they knew "not very much" or "nothing at all" about changes that the government plans to make.
Sir Michael Scholar, chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, demanded a rethink of the halt on funding for the General Lifestyle Survey, which is run by the Office for National Statistics. Scholar said: "If government is planning a major reform of the NHS, people will want to know if it is worse afterwards or not. These statistics are very important in reaching a rational view."
Labour sources said that the only explanation for the cuts in funding was that the government expected a hostile reaction to the reforms that do proceed and ministers were "planning how best to keep that from view".
Downing Street tried to distance itself from Britnell. A No 10 spokesman said: "We will never privatise the NHS. We remain committed to the principle of an NHS funded from general taxation and based on need not ability to pay. Mark Britnell is not the prime minister's health adviser. We are listening to the views of experts, patients and staff on how to improve our plans to strengthen the NHS."
Daniel Boffey and Toby Helm @'The Guardian'
(GB2011)

blakehounshell 
Now IDF saying only a few dozen crossed the border, not hundreds or thousands haaretz.com/news/diplomacy…

21 dead and a couple of hundred injured...

In Deadly Clashes, Israeli Troops Fire on Protesters

Military Camp 144

Asher_Wolf Asher Wolf

"Julian Assange became hero to the largest loser group on earth: the anti-capitalist movement." The cool kids are all banker-rapists nowdays

The End Is Nigh (Only six more days to get your shit together...)

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Kill me now...

Freedom's Just Another Word for Blowing Shit Up

ArabVoicesSpeak Samar Dahmash Jarrah 

I have a feeling #Obama is now rewriting his speach to Arab world #Nakba

Noam Sheizaf: Why Jews need to talk about the Nakba

3rd Intifada : WB Day 1 : الإنتفاضة الضفة

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John Pilger: How the Murdoch press keeps Australia’s dirty secret

The cult of Pippa Middleton’s arse

abumuqawama Andrew Exum

This will be SHOCKING if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been used by Arab regimes to draw attention away from their own problems.

!!!

IDFSpokesperson IDF

neither lebanese nor syrian armies taking any measures to prevent/reduce violence at riot flash points on their borders with Israel.

Israel better prepare, for a Palestinian state is on the way

Yuval Diskin is right. September always was a lousy month. Take September 1993, the cursed month when the the Oslo Accords were signed. Or 15 years earlier, the signing of the Camp David agreement between Israel and Egypt. The Nazi invasion of Poland took place in September, as did the Al-Qaida bombings in New York and the Second Intifada. James Dean was killed on September 30, and in September 1995 Israel agreed to hand over control of considerable parts of the West Bank to the Palestinians.
Lousiness, it transpires, is a matter of perspective. Whatever happens in September 2011, if anything does happen, will also be a matter of perspective.
Diskin's text, which adorned the Friends of Tel Aviv University conference, shouldn't particularly move or astonish anybody. Leaders of the Shin Bet security service and the Mossad, and former generals are not tested by their rhetoric. They are in charge of fear, and fear doesn't need that many words or poetic phrasing. Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, terrorism, rockets and, of course, an independent Palestinian state - that's all the vocabulary you need to phrase Israel's strategy of fear.
The head of the Shin Bet doesn't have, and apparently did not have, a peace conception. That's not his job. He doesn't create policy, he merely takes care of its ramifications. But the "policy" as he understands it is crystal-clear.
"Mahmoud Abbas, Salam Fayyad and the entire Palestinian Authority," he ruled, "represent only themselves, and certainly not Hamas in the Gaza Strip."
In other words, there was no point in talking to them from the outset, most certainly not now after they have reconciled with Hamas. The reconciliation may have shaken Diskin, he may not have expected it - or maybe he did and didn't say so - but it doesn't change the general picture. "Hamas did not change its ideas, ideology or policy," while the reconciliation will be "tested over time."
As if "time" was an independent factor unaffected by processes, policies, statements. As if neither Palestinians nor Israelis influence the content of this time and the manner in which changes will occur. And how much time are we speaking of, by the way? Are we now doomed to tear pages from a calendar until some deadline? Does the time run out in lousy September? Or maybe a year after the reconciliation agreement, when elections for the Palestinian parliament and presidency are supposed to take place? And when does that time even begin?
Diskin, of course, is but a metaphor. Maybe something will happen to him "over time" as well, and we will yet see him sign petitions or join to one of the peace initiatives. Many senior "security sources" experience such sudden enlightenment. But for now, he is unhesitatingly presenting to the public the fundamental assumptions that have shaped the Israeli government's policy.
There is no Palestinian partner and now there won't be, until the end of "time." The government doesn't even need to prove it. Reconciliation is an illusion, the Palestinian state will be a mirage, and neither of them obliges the government to change its vision. The government is already hacking away at the reconciliation, assuming that if it fails it will take Abbas with it, and if it survives it doesn't have room for an Israeli partner anyway.
But it is the debate over the identity of the partner that is illusory. It successfully substitutes the need to determine a policy, to decide the country's borders, to determine just how far it can reach into the occupied territories. It's empty babble, leaning on the theory of "confidence-building steps" since exposed as confidence-destroying steps, but still managed to make the question of the Palestinian partner - not the Israeli partner, God forbid - into the main issue in every political discussion.
Netanyahu's upcoming speech to Congress will spare no words from that absent partner; for this is the heart of a tactic masquerading as a policy. Israel has always tried to convince that it is reaching out for peace into the void. But this policy is about to sustain a shock in September. You can cancel out Mahmoud Abbas and Ismail Haniyeh. But a Palestinian state? One to which presidents and kings will suddenly start to arrive?
Zvi Bar'el @'Haaretz'

Correspondence between William Burroughs & Brion Gysin

Burroughs writes to Gysin in 1977 about writing songs, a possible collaboration with Patti Smith, and grabbing "a piece of the punk action." Burroughs was also working on early drafts of The Place of Dead Roads, which he refers to as "The Gay Gun."

In a letter to Gysin from 1979, Burroughs describes attending a musical, The Best Little Whore House in Texas, with Frank Zappa, who expressed interest in making a musical based on Naked Lunch.
(Click to enlarge)
@'word horde 2.0'

Pax Americana

ggreenwald Glenn Greenwald

They hate us for our freedoms: for the 2nd time in 3 days, "NATO" raid kills Afghan child: http://is.gd/OgzGyf

Eight said killed as IDF fires on infiltrators from Syria and Lebanon

HA!

Via

The Third Intifada?

Violent clashes broke out at noon Saturday between Israeli troops and Palestinians marching in the funeral procession of the 16-year-old boy, Milad Ayash, who was shot by an Israeli soldier yesterday and succumbed to his wounds at dawn today.
Two Palestinians were injured with rubber bullets when the troops attacked the procession as it was heading to Bab Al-Rahma cemetery for burial.
Ayyash was considered the first martyr in the third intifada (uprising), which activists were trying to ignite as of Friday.
The Israeli police and army were put on high alert after Palestinian youth groups announced intention to organize events and marches on the 63rd anniversary of Palestine Nakba.
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18 Palestinians Injured as Israeli Fighter Jets Attack Gaza

Just because...

MAN - it's complicated...

(Click to enlarge)

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DISCOGRAPHY

Henry joins Twitter

henryrollins

@henryrollins view full profile →

Los Angeles, CA

I Can Burn Your Face

Jill Magid

Article 12 / The Spy ProjectCommission with the Dutch Secret Service (AIVD)

International MF

birgittaj Birgitta Jónsdóttir 
IMF graffiti from Iceland: International Mother Fuckers: video: the graffiti has now been painted over.

In Paris, the Striking Strokes of Japanese Calligraphy

Julian Casablancas - Rave On

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Why Do We Fear an Empty Mind?

♪♫ The Weeknd - What You Need

Well he would. Wouldn't he?

blakehounshell Blake Hounshell
Strauss-Kahn to plead not guilty to attempted rape charges ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4…

UPDATE
Déjà vu 

Why was Strauss-Kahn Arrested but W. & Cheney went Free?

Glenn Greenwald: The quaint and obsolete Nuremberg principles

The People vs. Goldman Sachs

They weren't murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it.
Thanks to an extraordinary investigative effort by a Senate subcommittee that unilaterally decided to take up the burden the criminal justice system has repeatedly refused to shoulder, we now know exactly what Goldman Sachs executives like Lloyd Blankfein and Daniel Sparks lied about. We know exactly how they and other top Goldman executives, including David Viniar and Thomas Montag, defrauded their clients. America has been waiting for a case to bring against Wall Street. Here it is, and the evidence has been gift-wrapped and left at the doorstep of federal prosecutors, evidence that doesn't leave much doubt: Goldman Sachs should stand trial.
The great and powerful Oz of Wall Street was not the only target of Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse, the 650-page report just released by the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Democrat Carl Levin of Michigan, alongside Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Their unusually scathing bipartisan report also includes case studies of Washington Mutual and Deutsche Bank, providing a panoramic portrait of a bubble era that produced the most destructive crime spree in our history — "a million fraud cases a year" is how one former regulator puts it. But the mountain of evidence collected against Goldman by Levin's small, 15-desk office of investigators — details of gross, baldfaced fraud delivered up in such quantities as to almost serve as a kind of sarcastic challenge to the curiously impassive Justice Department — stands as the most important symbol of Wall Street's aristocratic impunity and prosecutorial immunity produced since the crash of 2008.
To date, there has been only one successful prosecution of a financial big fish from the mortgage bubble, and that was Lee Farkas, a Florida lender who was just convicted on a smorgasbord of fraud charges and now faces life in prison. But Farkas, sadly, is just an exception proving the rule: Like Bernie Madoff, his comically excessive crime spree (which involved such lunacies as kiting checks to his own bank and selling loans that didn't exist) was almost completely unconnected to the systematic corruption that led to the crisis. What's more, many of the earlier criminals in the chain of corruption — from subprime lenders like Countrywide, who herded old ladies and ghetto families into bad loans, to rapacious banks like Washington Mutual, who pawned off fraudulent mortgages on investors — wound up going belly up, sunk by their own greed...

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Matt Taibbi @'Rolling Stone'

Google and Facebook are fighting for our lives

Censors told to ignore artistic merit of child pictures

Photograph: Bill Henson

One of Australia's most prominent child protection advocate, Bravehearts, has weighed into the art censorship debate, calling for the Classification Board to be overhauled and for matters of ''artistic merit'' and expert evidence to be scrapped when deciding if art is pornography.
Bravehearts's submission to a Senate inquiry into the film and literature classification scheme was one of several submissions highly critical of the board for allegedly sanctioning the exhibition of photographs of children that would otherwise be illegal, and for failing to halt the proliferation of images that demean women and pressure young girls to act in sexual ways.
Other community and Christian groups wanted the board's power increased so it could censor outdoor advertising, which is at present self-regulated by an industry body, the Advertising Standards Bureau.
The executive director of Bravehearts, Hetty Johnston, an outspoken critic of the work of the photographer Bill Henson, called for NSW employment laws that ban taking photographs of naked and semi-naked children to be replicated across Australia and said such photos should be refused classification by the board.
''How is it that it was illegal to take the photos but not illegal to exhibit them?'' she said, referring to photographs Henson took of a naked 12-year-old girl that were exhibited at a Sydney art gallery in 2008, sparking a ferocious debate about pornography and art.
Ms Johnston said the Classification Board should not be able to render such images ''inoffensive to reasonable persons'' and therefore legal just because it had rated them G or PG.
''Deferring such critical decisions to a panel of selected individuals in a separate process is, in our view, not only unfair and unwise, it is dangerous. The Henson debate proved that.''
The group Collective Shout criticised the board for not censoring sexualised images in films, TV and the internet, and demeaning depictions of women in music recordings. It said self-regulation in advertising was ''lazy, irresponsible government'' that ''effectively [demanded] lone citizens enter into an exhausting and often futile battle with the government classification board which appears to defend corporations''.
Kids Free 2B Kids was angry children were bombarded with adult sexualised imagery on billboards, including images that if displayed in the workplace would be considered sexual harassment. It said it seemed the only criteria for an ad to be pulled was if a female's nipples or genitalia were exposed.
No matter how many complaints were received by the Standards Bureau, advertisements such as one for Wranglers jeans showing part of a woman's buttocks, topless women in GASP Jeans ads, and outdoor ads for brothels would continue to be permitted in the public domain, it said.
The director of the Classification Board, Donald McDonald, defended the board's work to the Senate inquiry but said that while the Classification Act was ''perfectly in tune'' for some things it was outdated for others. He said also that it would not be unreasonable for outdoor advertising to fall under its auspices.
''[The act] works perfectly for films and DVDs. It works quite well for publications. What it does not work for are things that are published on the internet,'' Mr McDonald said.
Wendy Frew @'SMH'