Quincy Jones 1933 - 2024
26 minutes ago
Tuesday 17 May 2011
Firas_Atraqchi Firas Al-Atraqchi
Mass grave found in Falluja, #Iraq - 28 bodies contained within US-made body bags, Iraqi authorities say. Gee, wonder who killed 'em.
Mass grave found in Falluja, #Iraq - 28 bodies contained within US-made body bags, Iraqi authorities say. Gee, wonder who killed 'em.
carsonmag +Carson
Preview PDF of Issue One including Mike Doughty Adam Freeland Mary Roach and Audrey Marrs http://fb.me/XUoNDuNG
Turkey VS WSB
Photo: Dimitri Kasterine (William S. Burroughs Texas 1983)
Half a century after a U.S. obscenity trial, the work of Beat Generation writer William S. Burroughs is heading back to court, this time in Turkey.An Istanbul-based publisher and his translator face obscenity charges for publishing Burroughs' novel, "The Soft Machine," and the same arguments about morality, literature and social value that shaped the American debate in the early 1960s are unfolding today.
"The book lacks narrative unity, while it is written in an arbitrary fashion that is devoid of cohesion in meaning," a Turkish government board said in a March ruling. "The way the book deals with the coarse, sleazy, vulgar and weak aspects of humans will develop an attitude that allows the justification of criminal activities in the readers' minds."
Decades ago, a court in Boston banned Burroughs' most prominent work, "Naked Lunch," after concluding it was obscene. A higher court reversed the ruling a few years later after testimony in the book's defense by poet Allen Ginsberg and writer Norman Mailer.
Burroughs' raw depictions of heroin addiction and homosexuality are hard to digest for some in Turkey, whose mostly Muslim population of 74 million is steeped in old traditions.
The case is part of a debate about free expression under a government that has successfully battled over Turkey's secular political system with the military and other hostile state institutions. The ruling party, led by devout Muslims who call themselves "conservative democrats," leads in the polls ahead of June elections, but opponents say its vows to pursue democratic reform mask an autocratic streak.
On Sunday, protesters in Turkish cities demonstrated against government plans to implement Internet content filters, saying the new system amounted to more censorship in an already heavy-handed effort to control information. Thousands of websites are banned under regulations aimed at curbing child pornography, illegal gambling and other cybercrimes.
Publisher Irfan Sanci printed 2,500 copies of Burroughs' novel, meaning a tiny fraction of Turks would see a hard copy. An advisory panel, the Prime Ministerial Board for the Protection of Children from Harmful Publications, said the book was not literature and was obscene because of its graphic descriptions of sex.
Article 226 of the penal code says its provisions "shall not apply to scientific, artistic and literary works" in some cases.
"There is a conflict between society, and the laws and the government," Sanci, 55, said in an interview with The Associated Press at his publishing house, Sel Yayincilik. He speculated that he was hit by a double dose of old state authoritarianism and a growing emphasis on "moral codes" by the government.
Sanci said two policemen from the Istanbul prosecutors' office informed him that the case will go to trial; he has testified before prosecutors and is awaiting a court date. The penalty for an obscenity conviction can be years in jail, though Sanci said the sentence is usually a fine.
He was cleared last year of obscenity charges for publishing a translation of "The Exploits of a Young Don Juan," published in 1911 by Guillaume Apollinaire, and the Geneva-based International Publishers Association commended Sanci.
The publisher was once a member of an illegal leftist organization and spent several years in jail after a military coup in 1980.
"The Soft Machine" is the first book in a trilogy by Burroughs, who died in 1997. Sanci has released the second and his team is working on the third.
"You can't judge the moral code of the Beat Generation," said Bilge Sanci, the publisher's daughter and his executive editor. She said the official panel, whose 10 members are chosen by government ministries and agencies, is not versed in "literature or aesthetics."
The board is led by Ruhi Ozbilgic, a deputy secretary in the office of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who has worked in customs, agriculture and state planning. Nurettin Yuksel, an official linked to the board, said its conclusions were not binding and that it was up to prosecutors to decide on the next step.
Burroughs is a scandalous figure in the American literary pantheon who, along with Ginsberg, novelist Jack Kerouac and others in the 1950s and 1960s, became known as the Beat Generation of writers that railed against the mainstream.
In "The Soft Machine," the protagonist confronts Mayan priests who manipulate the minds of slave laborers, and Burroughs uses the so-called "cut-up" splicing method to jumble the text and disrupt the narrative order.
Burroughs sought to "pull the rug out" from under readers and alter their perceptions by awakening them to pre-existing notions, said Richard Doyle, a professor of English who teaches a Burroughs class at Pennsylvania State University in the United States.
"Without understanding the goal of these techniques, then you're going to be puzzled that this is a work of art and you're only going to see the graphic language and so forth," Doyle said.
The first lines of "The Soft Machine" get right into petty theft and drug use, referring to the New York City subway — "the hole" — where the main character and "the sailor," a junkie who also appears in "Naked Lunch," roll drunks for pocket change:
"I was working the hole with the sailor and we did not do bad. Fifteen cents on an average night boosting the afternoons and short-timing the dawn we made out from the land of the free. But I was running out of veins."
Suha Sertabiboglu, a Turkish dentist who translated "The Soft Machine," said he worked on it eight hours a day for a month and that it was the most difficult of 38 book translations he had done. He said he sometimes sought meaning in a passage, only to realize there was no conventional meaning.
"It is anti-literature," he said.
@'A.P.'
First Listen: Boris - 'Heavy Rocks'
Digging further, Heavy Rocks — out May 24 — also celebrates that original release by digging, if ever-so-slightly, into the thick, distorted riffage that made Boris' mark at the beginning of the last decade. The guitar tone isn't quite the same, but, through the band's move toward poppier song structures, the attitude is. And, instead of dodging around the glam-teasing of 2008's uneven Smile, Heavy Rocks embraces glam with its own blistering approach to sonic excess. The one-two punch of "Galaxians" and "Jackson Head" is two Jack Daniel's shots away from a Dodge Charger crashing through the living room. And if you need a rager, lead guitarist Wata doot-doot-do's her way through the barn-burning headbanger "Window Shopping."Heavy Rocks isn't just one big riff party, though. There are moments of blissed-out sweetness in "Missing Pieces" and "Aileron." The latter actually appears on Attention Please as a short acoustic interlude with a picked chord progression that begs for a full song. So here it is, in all its 12-minute heavy shoegazing glory, like the sludge-metal weirdos in Harvey Milk having a really bummer day (which is always).
If there's anything to learn from Boris' prolific release schedule, especially in 2011, it's that the band sees no difference in its wide array of sound. This year, it's hard to disagree.
Lars Gotrich @'npr'
Hear 'Heavy Rocks' In Its Entirety
17 May: International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia
To mark this year's International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia, the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA-Europe) has published its Rainbow Europe Map and Index in which it rates each European country's laws and administrative practices according to 24 categories and ranks them on a scale between 17 (highest score: respect of human rights and full legal equality of LGBT people) and -7 (lowest score: gross violations of human rights and discrimination of LGBT people).While the publication of this kind of research is broadly to be welcomed, and as eye-catching as the rainbow map is, it may be considered problematic in its conflation of LGB and TS/TG issues. As Justus Eisfeld (co-director GATE - Global Action for Trans* Equality) points out:
There are 5 possible positive points to be gained for gender identity issues vs. 13 possible points in the sexual orientation categories (I counted freedom of assembly and freedom of association under sexual orientation because trans groups generally have not had the organizational capacity to even run into issues in this category yet). The negative points are similarly unequally spread: two possible negative points for gender identity (two negative points are mutually exclusive, I therefore counted them as one) and four for sexual orientation. This means that a country that scores well for sexual orientation will automatically be in the 'best' group, no matter what their human rights record is for trans people.
In the light of this, the separate indexes for gender identity and sexual orientation may perhaps be of more use.
Note that intersections of race, class, disability, etc, are not mentioned in the report; nor is it recorded whether subjects are binary or non-binary identified. It should also be remembered that some TS/TG people are also LGB, and vice versa. Last but by no means least, it should be noted that - as is so often the case with research of this nature - the situation of intersex people seems to have been entirely ignored.
By way of a counterpoint, Trans Murder Monitoring has launched an interactive map for IDAHOT 2011. The new interactive map for the first time visualises the 604 reported murders of trans people that the Trans Murder Monitoring (TMM) project has documented since January 2008. The interactive TMM map can be accessed on the TvT website here.
In the first four and a half months of 2011, 55 reported murders of trans people have been registered in 19 countries. While the actual circumstances of the killings often remain obscure, due to a lack of investigations and reports, many of the documented cases involve extreme aggression, including torture and mutilation.
Although it may seem that sexual orientation and gender identity is less of an issue it becomes clear that homophobia and transphobia exists, and may be increasing, in many places. If today's International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia serves one purpose, it is to raise awareness regarding the ongoing discrimination and violence committed by states, societies and individuals against lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer people on various scales, from homophobic and transphobic legislations and forms of state repression to hate crimes including insults, attacks and murders.
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The ILGA Rainbow Europe Map may be downloaded as two PDF files from here (map) and here (index).
Separate indexes for sexual orientation and gender identity may be downloaded here (gender identity) and here (sexual orientation).
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Thanks to Juris Lavrikovs and Silvan Agius (ILGA-Europe), Justus Eisfeld (co-director GATE - Global Action for Trans* Equality) and Carla LaGata (Research and Coordination, TvT project)
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Via Bird of Paradox
Gmos - Sun Ra Mix
Gmos (ISM/Fatty Fatty) has recorded a promo mix ahead of Amen Brother's Sun Ra Birthday Celebrations on May20th with Mike Huckaby. For more details, check mntothat.com
1 Sun Ra - Sleeping Beauty
2 Sun Ra - Twin Stars Of Hence
3 Sun Ra - I'll Wait For You
4 Sun Ra - Where Pathways Meet
5 Sun Ra - On Jupiter
6 Sun Ra - Space Is The Place
For Yotte!
1 Sun Ra - Sleeping Beauty
2 Sun Ra - Twin Stars Of Hence
3 Sun Ra - I'll Wait For You
4 Sun Ra - Where Pathways Meet
5 Sun Ra - On Jupiter
6 Sun Ra - Space Is The Place
For Yotte!
Warsaw - Pictures In My Mind (Unreleased)
The Warsaw version of the song that has just been released on Peter Hook's new EP
First Listen: Thurston Moore - 'Demolished Thoughts'
For nearly 30 years with Sonic Youth, Moore has created everything from eccentric pop tunes to lengthy rock-outs and free-form noise experimentation, and he's earned the freedom to explore his esoteric musical interests in various side projects. Similarly, Beck has been known to toggle back and forth between rambunctious, hip-hop-infused rock and moody, cosmic folk.
For Demolished Thoughts — out May 24 — Moore went the latter route, eschewing the tension and noise for an introspective acoustic sound. His songs here are about as lyrically earnest and evocative as anything he's written. "Simple pleasures strike like lighting, scratches spell her name / Thunder demons swipe her halo and then they run away / But I know better than to let her go," he sings in "Benediction," an ode to the stability of love. At the song's center are layered guitar textures formed around open tunings that ring out underneath Moore's cool, composed vocal delivery.
While Beck's influence is subtle, his presence is felt. Demolished Thoughts is, in some sense, the twin of Beck's own album Sea Change — if not in theme (Beck chronicled the ravages of a failed relationship), then at least in terms of existential contemplation and sonic template. The music is both hauntingly ethereal, as in "Space," and aggressively impassioned, as in the slack-stringed acoustic rocker "Circulation," which swells into a dissonant vamp of strings, thundering toms and power chords.
Demolished Thoughts was written over a two-year period and recorded this past fall and winter at Beck's Los Angeles studio and in Northampton, Mass., where Moore lives with his wife, Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon. It re-teams Moore with the violinist Samara Lubelski, who brings a swooning quality to every song. Together with Mary Lattimore's exquisite harp, songs like "Blood Never Lies" and "Illuminate" capture a sort of sprawling autumnal folksiness. The record also features Bill Nace on guitar, as well as Beck regulars Bram Inscore on bass, Joey Waronker on drums, and even Beck himself. The end result is a beautifully nuanced album that not only reveals a personal side to Thurston Moore's songwriting, but also sits alongside his strongest solo work.
Michael Katzif @'npr'
Hear 'Demolished Thoughts' In Its Entirety
Brainbows
@'Artoblogica'
Monday 16 May 2011
SophosLabs SophosLabs
Facebook Dislike button spreads fast, but is a fake – watch out! http://bit.ly/iqKEkl
Strauss-Kahn Does Not Have Diplomatic Immunity
AlanFisher Alan Fisher
To clarify - #DSK has diplomatic immunity when on IMF business. He was in New York in a 'personal capacity
Facebook ‘planking’ craze kills Australian man
Acton Beale, 20, originally from Tannum Sands near Gladstone in the state's central region, fell from a high-rise building on Sunday morning when he tried to plank on a balcony railing.
Planking involves a person lying face down in a rigid position at random locations and posting photos of the act on the internet.
Opposition police spokesman John-Paul Langbroek says the craze is dangerous.
"[It] really just shows that these fads that people are coming up with really can have tragic consequences if they are not careful," he said.
"People must understand that it is not the job of police or emergency services to save them from situations that could put them in harm.
"Any activities that people carry on, they are not always guaranteed to cause them injury.
"But if you go to do some of these activities in dangerous places, it can lead to dangerous consequences and that is the thing that Queenslanders must understand."
Deputy Police Commissioner Ross Barnett says participants can be charged if they plank in dangerous locations, or if they trespass.
"Once you start taking it up seven storeys or on top of a set of traffic lights, or on a set of railway lines, or there are a whole range of things, or on a bridge - anywhere that accentuates the risk and the daring - that obviously puts it into an area not only where it can be breaking the law, it more importantly is putting the person at significant danger," he said.
He says it is what police have been fearing.
"In some circumstances it can be fairly harmless, but as people become more and more competitive and try more and more obscure and difficult episodes of planking, which inevitably lead to greater levels of risk, then we were - and remain concerned - that this is the sort of thing that will eventuate and no-one wants to see that," he said.
Gladstone Acting Police Inspector Mike Dixon says Mr Beale's death is a tragedy.
Acting Inspector Dixon says a man was charged in Gladstone last week for planking on a police car, while police stopped a man from climbing on a city building on Friday.
"It wasn't a high building but there was an electrical cable connected to this sign that they were trying to climb and the person was intoxicated," he said.
"Obviously alcohol impairs judgement and it was poor judgement on his part [but] we prevented this offence from occurring.
"He could have been charged with another minor offence, however we spoke to him and advised him of the danger he had placed himslef in and he was sent home.
"Gladstone police have been in the media since the person planking on the police car came to notice and then we found all these other photos of persons in clearly very dangerous positions above traffic lights.
"Like I think the bit of harmless fun that it started as has got out of control, we don't want to see any other tragedies.
"Now we've seen one that's resulted in the death of a young man and it's a tragedy for the whole family and his friends."
@'ABC'
Violence erupts on Israel's borders
Palestinians call it the Nakba, or catastrophe - the anniversary of the day Israel became a state and hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled or were forced out.
In Israel and the occupied territories, thousands of people joined protests which turned into clashes with police.
Scores were wounded and two people were killed in Gaza.
But the worst violence was on the borders with Lebanon and Syria, where Palestinian refugees marched to the border and tried to breach the fence into Israel.
Thousands entered the Golan Heights, which Israel annexed from Syria in 1967, but most were arrested or turned back.
The Lebanese army on the Lebanese frontier said 10 Palestinians died when Israeli forces shot at rock-throwing protesters to prevent them from entering the Jewish state.
Lebanese security sources said more than 100 people had been wounded in the shooting in the Lebanese border village of Maroun al-Ras.
The Israel army said the Lebanese army had also used live ammunition in an attempt to hold back the crowds rushing the border fence.
Israeli military spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Avital Leibovich has accused Syria of orchestrating the incursion in the Golan Heights.
"The Syrian regime is intentionally attempting to divert the world's attention away from their brutal crackdown on their own civilians to the incitement on Israel's northern border.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hoped the confrontations would not escalate.
"I've instructed the army to behave with maximum restraint," he said.
"We hope the calm and quiet will quickly return. But let nobody be misled, we are determined to defend our borders and sovereignty."
One man, Ahmad Abu Arab, says protesters have taken courage from the recent uprisings across the Middle East.
"For 63 years we've been under occupation," he said. "Everywhere else in the world people are finding their freedom, but not the Palestinians."
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said in a televised address to mark the anniversary that those killed were martyrs to the Palestinian cause.
"Their precious blood will not be wasted. It was spilt for the sake of our nation's freedom," he said.
Syrian media reports said Israeli gunfire killed two people after dozens of Palestinian refugees infiltrated the Golan Heights from Syria along a frontline that has been largely tranquil for decades.
The Syrian foreign ministry condemned what it called Israel's "criminal activities".
Tense border
On Israel's tense southern border with the Gaza Strip, Israeli gunfire wounded 82 demonstrators approaching the fence with the Hamas Islamist-run enclave, medical workers said.
In a separate incident, Israeli forces said they shot a man who was trying to plant a bomb near the border. A body was later found.
In Tel Aviv, Israel's commercial hub, a truck driven by an Arab Israeli slammed into vehicles and pedestrians, killing one man and injuring 17 people.
Police were trying to determine whether the incident was an accident or an attack. Witnesses said the driver, who was arrested, deliberately ran amok with his truck in traffic.
Jordanian police fired teargas to disperse hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists who gathered at a village on the border with Israel.
"The police pushed us out of the protest area and after using teargas started to chase us with batons," one said from Karama village.
A spokesman for Islamist Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip, Sami Abu Zuhri, called it "a turning point in the Israeli-Arab conflict" that proved the Palestinian people and Arabs were committed to ending Israeli occupation.
Hezbollah condemned the "Israeli aggression on unarmed civilians in Maroun al-Ras and in the Golan, which constitutes a dangerous violation of human rights", said Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah at a pro-Palestinian protest in Maroun al-Ras.
"The resistance movement in Lebanon will continue to be an advocate of Palestinian national rights and calls on everyone to stand united in confronting Israeli occupation.
"What happened today in Maroun al-Ras and in the Golan is an embodiment of the will of the Palestinian people, who are committed to the right of return."
@'ABC'
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