Injecting centres a realistic, compassionate response to drug use

“Where Will We Live?”: Terrence Malick’s Fugitive Edens

In late May of this year Terrence Malick will release his fifth feature film, titled The Tree of Life. The trailer indicates that it has all the hallmarks of Malick’s aesthetic vision and directorial practice—foremost stunning cinematography, meditative voiceovers, and a plot structure perhaps best described as lyrical rather than traditionally dramatic. Moreover, while it’s obviously risky to judge the content of a film from a two-minute trailer The Tree of Life also appears to be of a piece thematically with Malick’s other films.
After all, via a voiceover spoken by Jessica Chastain (as the mother of the young boy who is the film’s protagonist) we are given this claim: “There are two ways through life, the way of nature and the way of grace.” This and early press about the film that summarizes it as an account of the “loss of innocence” of a young boy growing up in ‘50s America suggest that the film contemplates an essential divide in human nature between the pragmatic necessity for survival and a kind of original state of wonder.
This will hardly come as a surprise to enthusiasts of Malick’s work. Indeed, I will argue that even though Malick’s films are set in profoundly different times and places—ranging, for example, from early 17th century America to the Pacific theater of the second world war—taken all together they present essentially the same story; or more specifically, they are installments of a career-long fascination with the archetypal narrative of a transformation from a state of innocence to one of experience. For again and again Malick’s films rehearse, in ways both literal and figurative, one of the oldest and most abiding stories in myth and literature: the expulsion of human beings from a kind of paradise, an expulsion that in Malick’s work is emblematic of humanity’s painful estrangement from a state of transcendent union with the larger world and, indeed, with the cosmos.
This is not to say, however, that Malick is simply a wistful dreamer offering gorgeous but plaintive encomia to states of lost perfection. Certainly, some features of Malick’s works can support such a view; it’s no accident that words like “Edenic” and “idyllic” proliferate in commentary on the films, especially in reference to the villages of the Powhatan tribe in The New World or the tropical island of the Melanesian people in The Thin Red Line or the vast farm in the Texas panhandle where the better part ofDays of Heaven is set. Each offers, for a time at least, a vision of relative social harmony and human life integrated, however so precariously, with the natural world rather than at odds with it.
What saves Malick’s films from being artfully crafted exercises in nostalgia for prelapsarian perfection, however, is their willingness to recognize that any such vision is not simply fragile but also in a sense delusional—this for two reasons. First, the relationship between the beauty and purity of certain landscapes and the inward states of the characters who move through or inhabit those landscapes is not one of simple correspondence between personal virtue and beneficent environment. In fact, the desire to escape the mundane world and its demands can coincide with a profoundly disturbed, indeed psychopathic, worldview...

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James A. Williams @'PopMatters'

Let Him Prey: High-Ranking Jesuits Helped Keep Pedophile Priest Hidden

The conservative Catholic family lived on a quiet cul-de-sac in Walnut Creek and took pains to observe the traditions of a church racked by social change. Their lives appeared driven by the famous motivational phrase of Saint Ignatius, "Ad majorem Dei gloriam" — for the greater glory of God. It was the same motto that ostensibly guided the Jesuit priest, Donald McGuire, to whom they turned for spiritual guidance.
Then, in 1993, they learned that McGuire had done unthinkable things with their 16-year-old son, Charles, who traveled with him as his personal assistant. The boy and the priest had allegedly looked at pornographic magazines, masturbated, and taken showers together. The family took this devastating news to an esteemed San Francisco priest, Joseph Fessio, who, like McGuire, had once been a teacher at the University of San Francisco.
Fessio runs the Ignatius Press, a Catholic publishing house based in the Sunset District that is the primary English-language publisher of the pope's writings. He and McGuire shared a reputation for doctrinal orthodoxy. McGuire, for his part, was a cleric of worldwide renown, functioning as adviser and confessor to Mother Teresa. While family members considered reporting the abuse to secular authorities, Fessio urged them to stay quiet until he could confer with Jesuit higher-ups.
Confronted with the allegations, McGuire, a famously manipulative man known both for his charm and periodic rages, denied Charles's accusations or made excuses. His Jesuit bosses in Chicago, where McGuire was technically based, ordered him to undergo a residential treatment program at a psychiatric hospital for priests. In about seven months, McGuire was released and returned to active ministry. He continued to prey on other children for the next nine years.
McGuire, who was officially defrocked by the church in 2008, is serving a federal prison sentence stemming from his acts of child molestation. In 2009, SF Weekly published a story revealing his extensive ties to families and institutions in the Bay Area. But not until last month did newly released court documents in a lawsuit against the Jesuits reveal the full extent to which his colleagues and bosses were aware of his highly questionable relationships with teenage boys.
Despite this knowledge, fellow priests did not report McGuire's behavior outside the Church. In California, that silence may, at times, have amounted to a violation of state law, which requires professionals who work with children to immediately report suspected child abuse to police or child welfare workers...

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Peter Jamison @'SF Weekly'

Shock wave from trombone filmed

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New York Is Killing Me

Gil Scott-Heron is frequently called the “godfather of rap,” which is an epithet he doesn’t really care for. In 1968, when he was nineteen, he wrote a satirical spoken-word piece called “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” It was released on a very small label in 1970 and was probably heard of more than heard, but it had a following. It is the species of classic that sounds as subversive and intelligent now as it did when it was new, even though some of the references—Spiro Agnew, Natalie Wood, Roy Wilkins, Hooterville—have become dated. By the time Scott-Heron was twenty-three, he had published two novels and a book of poems and recorded three albums, each of which prospered modestly, but “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” made him famous. Scott-Heron calls himself a bluesologist. He is sixty-one, tall and scrawny, and he lives in Harlem, in a ground-floor apartment that he doesn’t often leave. It is long and narrow, and there’s a bedspread covering a sliding glass door to a patio, so no light enters, making the place seem like a monk’s cell or a cave. Once, when I thought he was away, I called to convey a message, and he answered and said, “I’m here. Where else would a caveman be but in his cave?”... 

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Alec Wilkinson @'The New Yorker'

Monique de Latour narrates a slide show of her never-before-seen photographs of Scott-Heron

Postscript
Obituary
 Discography

Bradley Manning: the bullied outsider who knew US military's inner secrets

"I think that sex, drugs, art and religion very much overlap with one another and sometimes one becomes another." - Brian Eno

Tim Hetherington - Sleeping Soldiers (2009)

“White People” doesn’t have to mean “Those who travel and traffic in ignorance” (but often does)

The glorious idiocy of Simon Chapman

Messi by Paul Trevillion

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Barcelona's Messi masterclass carves Manchester United open

Top 10 Evil Lairs

Home Is Where the Hate Is

For years, the accepted wisdom was that Osama bin Laden was holed up in a cave along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. It turns out he was living in a rather large, heavily armed house in an affluent town outside Islamabad. With his Abbottabad house being carefully examined, TIME takes a look at the horrible hideouts of other evildoers

Hitler's Bunker
Osama bin Laden's Compound
Jeffrey Dahmer's Apartment
The Manson Family Ranch
H.H. Holmes' Murder Castle
The Unabomber's Cabin
Josef Fritzl's Dungeon
Jonestown
Saddam Hussein's Spider Hole
Elizabeth Bathory's Castle

Full list @ TIME

Remember him THIS way...

The Bottle
Winter in America
We Almost Lost Detroit

Download Radiohead’s 20 Best Cover Songs

20. Radiohead – “Wonderwall” (Oasis Cover)
19. Radiohead – “Down By The River” (Neil Young Cover)
18. Radiohead – “Sing A Song For You” (Tim Buckley Cover)
17. Radiohead – “I’ll Wear It Proudly” (Elvis Costello Cover)
16. Radiohead – “Cinnamon Girl” (Neil Young Cover)
15. Radiohead – “Shot By Both Sides” (Magazine Cover)
14. Radiohead – “On The Beach” (Neil Young Cover)
13. Radiohead – “Tell Me Why” (Neil Young Cover)
12. Radiohead – “Rhinestone Cowboy” (Glen Campbell Cover)
11. Radiohead – “The Thief” (Can Cover)10. Radiohead – “Unravel” (Björk Cover)
09. Thom Yorke – “All For The Best” (Miracle Legion Cover)***
08. Radiohead – “The Rip” (Portishead Cover)
07. Atoms For Peace – “Love Will Tear Us Apart” (Joy Division Cover)
06. Radiohead – “Nobody Does It Better” (Carly Simon Cover)
05. Sparklehorse (Feat. Thom Yorke) – “Wish You Were Here” (Pink Floyd Cover)
04. Radiohead – “Union City Blue” (Blondie Cover)
03. Radiohead – “Ceremony” (Joy Division Cover)
02. Thom Yorke – “After The Gold Rush” (Neil Young Cover)
01. Radiohead – “The Headmaster Ritual” (The Smiths Cover)

download @ stereogum

Gil Scott-Heron R.I.P.

Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie xx - I'm New Here.

Damn!

♪♫ Dub FX & Stamina MC - Only Human

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http://www.convoyunltd.com

Barcelona #SpanishRevolution

Police Clash With Protesters in Barcelona

PHOTOGRAPHS

This is just fugn ugly. There really does not appear to be any provocation at all...

Girlz With Gunz #142 - 147 (Inna Dancehall)

mikamckinnon Mika McKinnon 

"Calm your ashes / Cease your mess. / Your eruptions / cause travel stress. / Cool your magma / go to rest." #ashcloudlullaby #grimsvotn

Glenn Greenwald: Sen. Benjamin Cardin's impressive feat

depressed_cat Depressed Cat

Spent the day eating spiders off the kitchen floor. Feel pretty bleak.

U.S. Tells Its Afghan Mercs: No Torture, Corpse Mutilation

Me SO want!

'Space Is The Place' T-Shirt
(Imaginary Foundation)
Available
HERE
(Thanx HerrJB!)

 

Pope shuts down Rome monastery for 'questionable behaviour' of monks

Let me see if I have got this right...there's a stripper who becomes a nun and a 'rowdy' monastery full of hetero priests is shut down...meanwhile pedo sorry hebephile priests seem to be able to find safe havens in the church all around the world...is that it?

Sex Incentives 'No Exception' in German Business World

Germany has some 400,000 prostitutes, estimates the Berlin-based sex worker advocacy group Hydra. Each of them caters to a number of clients, which means millions of men are buying sex -- even if few of them will admit it.
Germany legalized prostitution in 2001, giving sex workers the right to job contracts, social security and public insurance. But the profession remains taboo. Sex as an "incentive" or means of bribery in the business world -- such as the corporate prostitution party for German insurance salesmen organized by Mannheimer International -- is incompatible with western values. A businessman mixed up in red-light parties can't be tolerated -- at least not officially. "Here, that never would have happened," says one employee at a competing insurance company. "People might go to a brothel after a party, but it wouldn't be organized or paid for by the company."
Though most companies may not openly arrange such things for their employees, insiders say, the business world remains tied to the red-light industry.
"I earned the best money when I took people to brothels," says a taxi driver turned banker. The red-light establishments pay drivers a premium for bringing them patrons, who are usually in town on business, he says.
"The recent case is certainly no exception, even if the execution was unusual," says Klaus-J. Eisner of eventmanager.de, a web portal for the events industry. "The fact that bordello visits are used as rewards can be observed at every trade fair."
Sex as a business incentive is "widespread," confirms Mechthild Eickel, who works for a sex worker educational association called Madonna. "It's in every branch, it's just that not every company can afford it."
The Ties that Bind
At a certain level workers and customers can "no longer be rewarded with money," another industry insider says. But incentives outside the ordinary pay raise or bonus are not simply a question of hierarchy, event specialist Eisner says. The likelihood of such perks is higher for certain roles.
"Generally the trade and management industries work more with incentives than in manufacturing. In decades of personal experience with, for example, the automobile industry, I've never seen workers, technicians or engineers rewarded with incentives or events. Instead it was the buyers, sellers, press, salesmen or trade partners."
Sexual incentives are a special cementing agent, and thus particularly interesting from a managerial perspective, says Madonna's Eickel. "Rewards bind the interested parties and are therefore often the little connection to corruption," she says. "If a reward in the form of prostitution is taken, then a much easier potential for personal blackmail emerges." But the person who arranges and pays for the sexual encounter is also at risk of blackmail.
Of course, benefactors only profit when they operate in a hierarchical boy's club. "For female colleagues," says Eickel, sexual rewards would "not be an attractive incentive event."
'Common'
Meanwhile corporate orgies have grown in popularity. There are agencies that specialize in organizing events similar to the Mannheimer International sex party in Budapest. Larger escort services will also make such arrangements.
While conventional event planning agencies don't explicitly advertise similar offerings, Klaus-J. Eisner of eventmanager.de says he is certain that "many professional agencies would be in a position to organize such an occasion."
The industry resists the image, though. Uwe A. Kohrs, an executive committee member of the Society of Public Relations Agencies (GPRA) and head of communications agency "impact," says it seems unlikely that buying prostitutes could nurture contacts between companies -- or that serious PR firms or event organizers might offer such services. "Generally the distribution of benefits is handled with extreme restrictions," he says. "That almost excludes even treating someone to a meal. Naturally there are black sheep -- but sex in the context of business? It's not an issue."
Madonna's Mechthild Eickel disagrees. "It's common," she says.
Frank Patalong @'Der Spiegel'

Japanese scientist: Fukushima meltdown occurred within hours of quake

US put pressure on Saudi Arabia to let women drive, leaked cables reveal

Draconian Anti-Piracy Censorship Bill Passes Senate Committee

The controversial PROTECT IP Act unanimously passed the Senate Judiciary Committee today. When the PROTECT IP Act becomes law U.S. authorities and copyright holders will have the power to seize domains, block websites and censor search engines to prevent copyright infringements. Introduced just two weeks ago, the bill now heads over to the Senate for further consideration and another vote.
The U.S. Government continues to back legislation that opens the door to unprecedented Internet censorship.
Two weeks ago a group of U.S. senators proposed legislation to make it easier to crack down on so-called rogue websites, and today the Senate’s Judicial Committee unanimously approved the bill.
When the PROTECT IP Act becomes law the authorities can legitimately seize any domain name they deem to be facilitating copyright infringement. All that’s required to do so is a preliminary order from the court. But that’s just the start, the bill in fact provides a broad range of censorship tools.
In case a domain is not registered or controlled by a U.S. company, the authorities can also order search engines to remove the website from its search results, order ISPs to block the website, and order ad-networks and payment processors to stop providing services to the website in question.
Backers of the bill argue that the PROTECT IP Act is needed as an extension of the already controversial domain seizures. As reported previously, it is now relatively easy for a seized website to continue operating under a new non-US based domain name.
Not everyone agrees with this stance. Yesterday several Internet giants including Google, Yahoo, eBay and American Express asked the Senate Committee not to adopt the bill, warning it would “undoubtedly inhibit innovation and economic growth.”
However, the concerns raised by the companies did not affect the vote today.
“Today the Judiciary Committee took an important step in protecting online intellectual property rights. The Internet is not a lawless free-for-all where anything goes,” commented Senator Orrin Hatch. “The Constitution protects both property and speech, both online and off.”
“The PROTECT IP Act targets the most egregious actors, and is an important first step to putting a stop to online piracy and the sale of counterfeit goods,” Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said commenting on the importance of the bill.
“Both law enforcement and rights holders are currently limited in the remedies available to combat websites dedicated to offering infringing content and products. These rogue websites are often foreign-owned and operated, or reside at domain names that are not registered through a U.S.-based registry or registrar,” Leahy added.
Similar comments were made by the other Committee members and the various entertainment industry lobby groups.
For Hollywood and the major record labels the PROTECT IP Act is the legislation they have dreamed of for a long time. It allows for copyright holders to obtain a court orders to seize a domain, or prevent payment providers and ad-networks from doing business with sites that allegedly facilitate copyright infringement. All without due process.
The PROTECT IP Act will now move on to the Senate where it’s expected to be opposed by Senator Ron Wyden, who also stopped the bill’s predecessor COICA, fearing it would stifle free speech. Whether it will be enough to prevent the legislation from becoming law has yet to be seen.
Ernesto @'Torrent Freak'

FIFA Ethics Committee Call Blatter

Sepp Blatter will appear before FIFA's ethics committee on Sunday to answer charges that he knew about alleged cash payments, the world governing body announced on Friday.
The charge has been made by Mohamed Bin Hammam, his rival for the FIFA presidency in next week's election, who will also be at the hearing to answer a charge of bribery.
The latest development means that three of the most powerful men in world football - FIFA vice-president Jack Warner has also been charged with bribery - will now appear before the ethics committee on Sunday.
The ethics committee are bound by their rules to investigate any complaint by an executive committee member under article 16 of the ethics code.
FIFA said in a statement: "On 26 May 2011, FIFA ExCo member Mohamed Bin Hammam has requested the FIFA ethics committee to open ethics proceedings against FIFA president Joseph S. Blatter on the basis that, in the report submitted by FIFA ExCo member Chuck Blazer earlier this week, FIFA vice-president Jack A. Warner would have informed the FIFA president in advance about alleged cash payments to delegations attending a special meeting of the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) apparently organised jointly by Jack A. Warner and Mohamed Bin Hammam on 10 and 11 May 2011 and that the FIFA President would have had no issue with these.
"Subsequently, the FIFA ethics committee today opened a procedure against the FIFA president in compliance with art. 16 of the FIFA code of ethics.
"Joseph S. Blatter has been invited to take position by 28 May 2011, 11:00 CET and to attend a hearing by the FIFA ethics committee at the Home of FIFA (Zurich) on 29 May 2011."
FIFA's code of ethics rules state that as the complaint came from a member of the body's executive committee, the independent ethics committee must now also investigate Blatter.
The code states: "FIFA accepts complaints only from the executive committee of an association, the executive committee of a confederation, members of the FIFA executive committee and from the FIFA secretary general."
The code also declares that FIFA officials have a duty to report any wrongdoing. It says: "Officials shall report any evidence of violations of conduct to the FIFA secretary general, who shall report it to the competent body."
@'The Express'

Why did Ratko Mladić's arrest take so long?

Julian Assange Fears White House Will "Criminalize" Investigative Journalism

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How Advertising Creates Memories That Never Happened

Sarkozy’s government war on the internet

♪♫ James Blake - The Wilhelm Scream (BBC)

Badlands: An Oral History

On July 10, 1972, in La Junta, Colorado, a twenty-eight-year-old ex-MIT philosophy instructor named Terrence Malick began filming Badlands, a script based on the true story of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, teenage lovers whose 1958 murder spree across the Nebraska plains made national headlines. To finance the picture, Malick had raised $250,000—a pittance even by the standards of the day—and to play the leads he had hired a journeyman TV actor, Martin Sheen, and an unknown, untrained actress and onetime folk singer, Sissy Spacek.
Badlands tells a classic lovers-on-the-lam story. In a shabby South Dakota suburb, garbage man Kit Carruthers meets thirteen-year-old Holly Sargis as she twirls her baton in her front yard. They fall in love, but after Holly's father deems Kit unsuitable, Kit shoots him dead in the Sargis living room. Kit and Holly flee across the vast, empty badlands of South Dakota, killing anyone who gets in their way.
The action behind the scenes was hardly less turbulent. The mild-mannered Malick brawled with his producer, brutalized his crew (which turned over at least twice), and saw a special-effects man gravely burned in a terrible accident. As the shoot ran on and on—twice as long as it was supposed to—crew members quit en masse. Back home, they would tell their friends Malick had gone crazy. That he had amassed more than a million feet of footage. That he just wouldn't stop shooting. A movie that had begun production in 100-degree heat wrapped amid snow flurries.
Malick's belief in his picture never faltered, though, and after ten months in the editing room he emerged with what critic David Thomson has called "one of the most assured debuts in all of American film." Badlands launched not only his own career but also those of Sheen and Spacek, cinematographer Tak Fujimoto, producer Edward R. Pressman, art director Jack Fisk, and many others. Rather than exploit his moment, though, Malick withdrew. He stopped speaking to the press completely in 1975, and after making Days of Heaven (1978) and beginning pre-production on an extravagantly ambitious new film, he abruptly fled Hollywood. Twenty years would elapse before he made another movie, and during this period the legend of the elusive director grew to Salinger-esque dimensions. Where had he gone, and why had he repudiated such a promising career?
On the eve of the release of Malick's fifth film, The Tree of Life, GQ revisits the making of Badlands. We spoke with actors, crew members and admirers* to discover the roots of its driven and enigmatic director's love/hate relationship with Hollywood...

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Nathaniel Penn @'GQ'

PoliticsWikileaks Cables Show Speculators Behind Oil Bubble

Funky House Apple - Mr Bean

XLR8R Podcast 199: Rod Modell's MUTEK Mix

MUTEK festival, which always serves as one of the year's premiere showcases for techno and forward-thinking electronic sounds. In hopes of getting everyone as much in the MUTEK spirit as we are, we decided to enlist one of the festival's heavyweights for the XLR8R podcast series. And who answered the call? Detroit techno veteran Rod Modell, best known for his work as Deepchord and as one half of Echospace with Steve Hitchell. Deepchord presents Echospace will be performing live as part of MUTEK's Nocturne 03 event—a party that also features a live set from Plastikman—and Modell has put together a preview of sorts with this exclusive mix, a session of dark and dubby techno that digs heavily into his own catalog. Highlighted by its incessant pulse, underwater synth melodies, and ever-present sense of foreboding, the podcast also serves as a primer for Modell's forthcoming Deepchord album, Hash-Bar Loops, which is slated for a July 4 release on the long-standing Soma label.
01 Steve Roach "Groundswell" (Fortuna)
02 Studio 1 "Rosa" (Studio 1)
03 Sustainer "Múltiplo" (Italic)
04 The Advent "Electro 8.07 FM" (Tresor)
05 Deepchord "Sofitel (Processed)" (Soma)
06 CV313 "Subtraktive (Intrusion's Road To Zion Dub)" (Echospace [Detroit])
07 STL "A Beautiful Mind" (Echospace [Detroit])
08 Dick Richards "Lichen" (Raum...Musik)
09 Intrusion "Intrusion Dub" (Echospace [Detroit])
10 Infiniti "Thought Process" (Tresor)
11 Marko Fürstenberg "Untitled 10" (Artless)
12 Martin Schulte "The Fog" (Rare Noise)
13 Pendle Coven "Uncivil Engineering Calm Mix" (Modern Love)
14 STL "Checkmate" (Echospace [Detroit])
15 Deepchord "Stars" (Soma)
16 Studio 1 "Silber" (Studio 1)
17 Le Clic "Jack Is Whack (2000 and One Classic Cut)" (Wolfskuil)
18 Kotai + Mo "Bu" (Electro Music Department)
19 Deepchord "Tangier" (Soma)
20 CV313 "Subtraktive (Intrusion's Twilight Dub)" (Echospace [Detroit])
21 CV313 "Sailingstars (Intrusion's Reform)" (Echospace [Detroit])
22 Steve Roach "Ancestral Horizon" (Fortuna)
Shawn Reynaldo @'XLR8R'

10 Things You Should Know About Male Depression