Basement Jaxx - Classic Essential Mix (1999)
19 minutes ago
Saturday, 11 June 2011
Friday, 10 June 2011
The man who screwed an entire country
Two of them are well known. The first is the lurid saga of his “Bunga Bunga” sex parties, one of which has led to the unedifying spectacle of a prime minister being put on trial in Milan on charges of paying for sex with a minor. The Rubygate trial has besmirched not just Mr Berlusconi, but also his country.
However shameful the sexual scandal has been, its impact on Mr Berlusconi’s performance as a politician has been limited, so this newspaper has largely ignored it. We have, however, long protested about his second failing: his financial shenanigans. Over the years, he has been tried more than a dozen times for fraud, false accounting or bribery. His defenders claim that he has never been convicted, but this is untrue. Several cases have seen convictions, only for them to be set aside because the convoluted proceedings led to trials being timed out by a statute of limitations—at least twice because Mr Berlusconi himself changed the law. That was why this newspaper argued in April 2001 that he was unfit to lead Italy.
We have seen no reason to change that verdict. But it is now clear that neither the dodgy sex nor the dubious business history should be the main reason for Italians looking back on Mr Berlusconi as a disastrous, even malign, failure. Worst by far has been a third defect: his total disregard for the economic condition of his country. Perhaps because of the distraction of his legal tangles, he has failed in almost nine years as prime minister to remedy or even really to acknowledge Italy’s grave economic weaknesses. As a result, he will leave behind him a country in dire straits.
A chronic disease, not an acute one
That grim conclusion might surprise students of the euro crisis. Thanks to the tight fiscal policy of Mr Berlusconi’s finance minister, Giulio Tremonti, Italy has so far escaped the markets’ wrath. Ireland, not Italy, is the I in the PIGS (with Portugal, Greece and Spain). Italy avoided a housing bubble; its banks did not go bust. Employment held up: the unemployment rate is 8%, compared with over 20% in Spain. The budget deficit in 2011 will be 4% of GDP, against 6% in France.
Yet these reassuring numbers are deceptive. Italy’s economic illness is not the acute sort, but a chronic disease that slowly gnaws away at vitality. When Europe’s economies shrink, Italy’s shrinks more; when they grow, it grows less. As our special report in this week’s issue points out, only Zimbabwe and Haiti had lower GDP growth than Italy in the decade to 2010. In fact GDP per head in Italy actually fell. Lack of growth means that, despite Mr Tremonti, the public debt is still 120% of GDP, the rich world’s third-biggest. This is all the more worrying given the rapid ageing of Italy’s population.
Low average unemployment disguises some sharp variations. A quarter of young people—far more in parts of the depressed south—are jobless. The female-participation rate in the workforce is 46%, the lowest in western Europe. A mix of low productivity and high wages is eroding competitiveness: whereas productivity rose by a fifth in America and a tenth in Britain in the decade to 2010, in Italy it fell by 5%. Italy comes 80th in the World Bank’s “Doing Business” index, below Belarus and Mongolia, and 48th in the World Economic Forum’s competitiveness rankings, behind Indonesia and Barbados.
The Bank of Italy’s outgoing governor, Mario Draghi, spelt things out recently in a hard-hitting farewell speech (before taking the reins at the European Central Bank). He insisted that the economy desperately needs big structural reforms. He pinpointed stagnant productivity and attacked government policies that “fail to encourage, and often hamper, [Italy’s] development”, such as delays in the civil-justice system, poor universities, a lack of competition in public and private services, a two-tier labour market with protected insiders and exposed outsiders, and too few big firms.
All these things are beginning to affect Italy’s justly acclaimed quality of life. Infrastructure is getting shabbier. Public services are stretched. The environment is suffering. Real incomes are at best stagnant. Ambitious young Italians are quitting their country in droves, leaving power in the hands of an elderly and out-of-touch elite. Few Europeans despise their pampered politicians as much as Italians do...
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Wikileaks - Behind The News (Sheffield Docfest 9/6/11)
Moderator: Nick Fraser
Participants: Judith I Ehrlich, Vaughan Smith, Michael Parenti, James Ball
Welcome to the age of Wikileaks – never out of the news as subject matter or source. But what is the organisation’s real impact? Has it altered international relations and brought down governments? Has it change the way news is gathered and released forever - or merely made diplomats more discreet with their email exchanges? In search of the story behind the story, we’ve invited a panel of people closely connected to Wikileaks and Julian Assange. Journalist and BBC commissioning editor Nick Fraser, is keen to ask them some questions...
Via
In Conversation with Julian Assange
Nkulee Dube - Africa Festival Würzburg 06/05/2011
No female artist has managed to fuse ethno-soul, jazz with ethno-ragga in one song as this 24-year old singer, songwriter, Nkulee Dube has done in such a short space of time since entering this challenging and yet exciting industry.
Born to the family of a music legend, Nkulee Dube has big shoes to fill to preserve and sustain the name of her late father, Lucky Dube. She glides and slides with ease in between her songs as she traverses between ragga and ethno-soul as if she was born on stage. As a guest artist and backing vocalist Nkulee has been part of her late father’s band ‘One People’, and has performed at major festivals in Australia, Holland, Papa New Genea, French Gayana, etc.
(nativerhythms)
Thursday, 9 June 2011
Scott Walker Scores Duet For One At Royal Opera House
Walker says: “I must admit to not really being an admirer of Cocteau. I am, however, an admirer of Aletta Collins and her work. So when Aletta asked me to collaborate with the intention of deconstructing the original script for dance, I was grateful for the challenge to help take what is essentially, in my humble opinion, an antiquated piece of misogyny (in this case, woman as willing victim) and try to turn it on its head and use its traces to create something new."
Duet For One is performed alongside La Voix Humane, Poulenc’s opera based on Cocteau’s play from 1932, staged by Tom Cairns. London Royal Opera House, 17–25 June, 7:45pm, £10.20–£24.50.
@'The Wire'
NSFW Our allies (?) at work
blakehounshell Blake Hounshell
I don't know the context, but this shooting of a man, apparently by Pakistani Rangers, in cold blood is horrible youtube.com/watch?v=B5ieAZ…
I don't know the context, but this shooting of a man, apparently by Pakistani Rangers, in cold blood is horrible youtube.com/watch?v=B5ieAZ…
Authorities investigating man’s shooting by Rangers
Robag Wruhme - ClashMusic Dj Mix Podcast - June 2011
Download 01. Intro - Kohlschmidt / Hinze
02. Dt64 Jingle
03. Tomita - Star Wars
04. Zamfir - The Lonely Shepherd
05. Martin Böttcher - Thema Aus Winnetou I
06. Depeche Mode - See You
07. Grandmaster Melle Mel - Beat Street Breakdown
08. Public Enemy - Public Enemy No.1
09. Kohlschmidt Interview
10. Sandow - Okay
11. Max Goldt - Monster Aus Jenaer Glas
12. Deus - Serpentine
13. Sonic Youth - Unwind
14. Nico - Femme Fatale
15. Meret Becker & Blixa Bargeld - Stella Maris
16. Maria Callas - Puccini: Gianni Schicchi - O Mio Babbinocaro
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Jimi Hendrix (phonebook portrait)
Taking an ordinary phone book, Alex Queral carves a face into this object of so many faceless names. With the book, a very sharp X-ACTO® knife, a little pot of acrylic medium to set detail areas and a great deal of talent, Queral literally peels away the pages like the skin of an onion to reveal the portrait within. Once the carving is complete, he will often apply a black wash to enhance the features and then seal the entire book with acrylic to preserve the work. However, he never loses the line registration; and the book remains quite pliable
Alex Queral
Ian Dury on Charlie Gillett's Honky Tonk (1977)
I'm sure all fans of the late Charlie Gillett and Ian Dury will enjoy this programmme on Radio London from 1977 - not sure of the exact date recorded just as New Boots & Panties was being released. Dury engages us with some poetry and an eclectic choice of records and some entertaining banter between the two.Wikipedia says of Dury-
"Dury was born in north-west London at his parents' home at 43 Weald Rise, Harrow Weald, Harrow (although he often pretended, and indeed all but one of his obituaries in the national press stated, that he was born in Upminster, Havering). His father, William, was a bus driver and former boxer, while his mother Margaret (known as Peggy) was a health visitor, the daughter of a Cornish doctor, and granddaughter of an Irish landowner.
William Dury trained with Rolls-Royce to be a chauffeur, and was then absent for long periods, so Peggy Dury took Ian to stay with her parents in Cornwall. After the Second World War, the family moved to Switzerland, where his father chauffeured for a millionaire and the Western European Union. In 1946 Peggy brought Ian back to England and they stayed with her sister, Mary, a physician in Cranham, a small village bordering Upminster. Although he saw his father on visits, they never lived together again.
At the age of seven, he contracted polio; very likely, he believed, from a swimming pool at Southend on Sea during the 1949 polio epidemic. After six weeks in a full plaster cast in Truro hospital, he was moved to Black Notley Hospital, Braintree, Essex, where he spent a year and a half before going to Chailey Heritage Craft School, East Sussex, in 1951. Chailey was a school and hospital for disabled children, and believed in toughening them up, contributing to the observant and determined person Dury became. Chailey taught trades such as cobbling and printing, but Dury's mother wanted him to be more academic, so his aunt Moll arranged for him to enter the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe which he attended until the age of 16 when he left to study painting at Walthamstow Art College, having gained GCE 'O' Levels in English Language, English Literature and Art.
From 1964 he studied art at the Royal College of Art under British artist Peter Blake, and in 1967 took part in a group exhibition, Fantasy and Figuration, alongside Pat Douthwaite, Herbert Kitchen and Stass Paraskos at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.[6] When asked why he did not pursue a career in art, he said, "I got good enough [at art] to realise I wasn't going to be very good."[citation needed] From 1967 he taught art at various colleges in the south of England.
Dury married his first wife, Betty Rathmell, in 1967 and they had two children, Jemima and the recording artist Baxter Dury. Dury divorced Rathmell in 1985, but remained on good terms."
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More Ian Dury on the radio
Bill Laswell Interview
Bill Laswell: Well yeah, you have to be, right? Or else you wouldn’t continue. I think it’s not just recorded sound but sound in general. Everything you hear is part of a kind of a cacophony of different orchestrations, whether it’s noise or nature. All of this gets synthesized into music, and I think it’s all relevant. It’s how you put things together. I don’t have a particular philosophy and pretty much what I say will change daily, but I am of course motivated by sound and especially extremes of sound, whether it’s low-end or a symphony or space and silence, it’s all motivating, and if that’s what you choose to do with yourself you need to immerse yourself in it one hundred percent and when you do that you find it all comes to you naturally and it’s still a motivation.
PM: What is your philosophy on making a record and what is your goal?
BL: Well, the philosophy is not to have a philosophy, and the goal is to get a good result that at least you feel good about that you’re not second-guessing – which I’m not too good at – or with the hope maybe that other people also relate and get something positive out of it.
PM: I’ve read that you don’t like to spend too much time on something, that you like to get the sound that you’re going for then move forward.
BL: Pretty much. If I don’t get what I think is valuable I’ll probably wait or move on and come back to something else. I don’t beat away at something for long periods of time. It’s usually if it’s not sitting right, if it doesn’t feel right, I’ll move on to some other area and then come back. I don’t like that idea of getting stuck in one place.
PM: What in your life first attracted you to dub music?
BL: Well I guess it came from the idea of rhythm section coming first because I had experience dealing with repetition and bass and drums. Earlier on when I started it was not that different – it was sort of R&B and sort of country music and blues and minimal rock stuff. I didn’t really come out of rock and rock & roll, I came more from rhythm & blues earlier on and blues and country music. So I related to the minimalism, the simplicity of the rhythms – bass and drums – to start with. When I first heard reggae I didn’t really think about it here or there. It wasn’t that important to me, even though it was at that moment – I think around the time that Bob Marley was just starting and everyone was jumping on that – it wasn’t that interesting to me, but when I started to hear dub I became interested in all of the music coming out of Jamaica and I sort of went backwards. I started with dub records and I would buy anything that didn’t have vocals, or even didn’t have horns. I was kind of just turning on the rhythm. And then later on, through that, I went and worked backwards and discovered all the great artists there with vocals...
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Phil Moffa @'Glasschord'
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