The Ripps - Long Live The Ripps
2 hours ago
Sunday, 21 August 2011
Egypt’s ‘Flagman’ takes down Israeli embassy flag
People chanting, cars honking and others carrying Ahmed al-Shahat on their shoulders in joyful expression of the absence of the flag were seen shortly after the incident.
Al-Shahat had climbed the building a few hours into the morning and took down the blue and white Star of David while hundreds on the ground cheered in support. Egyptians have been protesting non-stop since Friday afternoon, demanding that the Israeli ambassador leave and all diplomatic ties with Israel cut.
A raid by the Israeli defense forces killed five Egyptians along the two countries Sinai Peninsula border on Thursday.
Israel said it was chasing terrorist targets involved in an attack in southern Israel that left at least 8 people dead.
The Egyptian government condemned the incident and asked Tel Aviv for an official apology. Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Saturday said the loss of life was “regretful,” but stopped short of issuing an apology.
Eyewitnesses at the scene in Egypt’s capital say hundreds of people are flocking to the embassy in a massive rally of joy.
The taking down of the flag created big waves among activists on Twitter and the hashtag #FlagMan was receiving hundreds of tweets.
@mosaaberizing Mosa’ab Elshamy wrote “Cairo is as happy as the day Mubarak stepped down. Cars honking and citizens celebrating, all thanks to FlagMan.”
@NotMobarak said, “It’s a bird…It’s a plane…No! It’s FlagMan.”
Another wrote that “Spiderman is in his room weeping his stardom is over.”
Manar Ammar @'bikyamasr'
Flagman is also LampPostman:)
Saturday, 20 August 2011
Aldo Romano, Danilo Rea und Rosario Bonnacorso - Jazz-Festival Porquerolles 22.07.2011
1. Come rain or come shine
2. Positano
3. Norwegian Wood
4. Over the Rainbow
5. Manda
6. Song for Mat
7.
8. la canzone de lu amore perduto
9. la canzone di marinella
10. Bocca di rosa
11. il camino
Aldo Romano (drums)
Danilo Rea (piano)
Rosario Bonnacorso (bass)
♪♫ Patti Smith, Eddie Vedder and Johnny Depp - Dancing Barefoot
Voices for Justice 'West Memphis Three' Rally Little Rock Arkansas August 28, 2010
Modified ecstasy 'attacks blood cancers'
Their early study showed all leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma cells could be killed in a test tube, but any treatment would be a decade away.
A charity said the findings were a "significant step forward".
In 2006, a research team at the University of Birmingham showed that ecstasy and anti-depressants such as Prozac had the potential to stop cancers growing.
The problem was that it needed doses so high they would have been fatal if given to people.
The researchers, in collaboration with the University of Western Australia, have chemically re-engineered ecstasy by taking some atoms away and putting new ones in their place.
One variant increased cancer-fighting effectiveness 100-fold. It means that if 100g of un-modified ecstasy was needed to get the desired effect, only 1g of the modified ecstasy would be needed to have the same effect.
Scientists say this also reduced the toxic effect on the brain.
Lead researcher Professor John Gordon, from the University of Birmingham, told the BBC: "Against the cancers, particularly the leukaemia, the lymphoma and the myeloma, where we've tested these new compounds we can wipe out 100% of the cancer cells in some cases.
"We would really need to pinpoint which are the most sensitive cases, but it has the potential to wipe out all the cancer cells in those examples.
"This is in the test tube, it could be different in the patient, but for now it's quite exciting."
'Soapy' cells
It is believed that the drug is attracted to the fat in the membranes of the cancerous cells.
Researchers think it makes the cells "a bit more soapy", which can break down the membrane and kill the cell.
They said cancerous cells were more susceptible than normal, healthy ones.
However, doctors are not going to start prescribing modified ecstasy to cancer patients in the near future.
The research has been demonstrated only in samples in a test tube. Animals studies and clinical trials would be needed before prescribing a drug could be considered.
First, however, chemists in the UK and Australia are going to try to tweak the modified ecstasy even further as they think it can be made even more potent.
'Genuinely exciting'
If everything is successful, a drug is still at least a decade away.
Dr David Grant, scientific director of the charity Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research, said: "The prospect of being able to target blood cancer with a drug derived from ecstasy is a genuinely exciting proposition.
"Many types of lymphoma remain hard to treat and non-toxic drugs which are both effective and have few side effects are desperately needed.
"Further work is required but this research is a significant step forward in developing a potential new cancer drug."
James Gallagher @'BBC'
'npr's Andy Carvin's #wm3 tweets
acarvin Andy Carvin
More on the Alford Plea, which allowed the West Memphis Three to be released today. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alford_pl… #wm3
acarvin Andy Carvin
#wm3 presser beginning. So strange to see them in their 30s. They look very quiet, pensive. Damian's the most recognizable.
Can't find the new punk? You're not looking hard enough - grime, hip hop and the UK riots
In the days since the UK riots, there's been a strand of commentary lamenting the lack of a musical backdrop equivalent to punk in the 1980s. Last week, Krissi Murison of the NME wrote in the Guardian:
Hip hop and grime occupies much the same space today as punk did in the eighties. As with punk, some appears pretty much apolitical, some expresses a purely emotional response to a contemporary situation, and some provides as biting a political analysis as one would hope to find anywhere.
Back in February, Dan Hancox wrote of how Lethal Bizzle's Pow—a track whose 'riotous energy' was considered so incendiary even the instrumental was banned from clubs—had become the unofficial anthem of the student movement.
Last week, mere days after the riots, Hancox wrote in the Guardian about the UK rap/grime scene's response to the riots:
If it seems a little premature for journalists to be asking why UK rap hasn't responded to the riots, it is also unfounded. Writing only two days after the heaviest night of rioting across London, Dan Hancox summarised the musical responses so far:
All over the world, wherever there is social deprivation and large numbers of young people, a unique local rap scene is almost certain to be found. From the banlieues of Paris to the refugee camps of Palestine, from the streets of London to the projects of Los Angeles, from the barrios of Caracas to the townships of South Africa, hip hop has been the soundtrack to social unrest.
Some of these scenes are chronicled in Sujatha Fernandes Close to the Edge: In Search of the Global Hip Hop Generation. She writes:
Visit the Guardian to read the full Krissi Murison and Dan Hancox articles. See Dan Hancox's blog for more, including this excellent article at Mute on grime and the 'EMA kids'
Sujatha Fernandes' Close to the Edge will be published on 3rd October.
White Riot: Punk and the Politics of Race, edited by Stephen Duncombe and Maxwell Tremblay, is out on 5th September.
Tamar Shlaim @'Verso'
2kolderz - They Will Not Control Us
“They [punks] talk of the boredom of living in the council high-rise blocks, of living at home with parents, of dole queues, of the mind-destroying jobs offered to unemployed school-leavers. They talk of how there is nothing to do.”...
If that was punk's manifesto in 1976, then here's the closest thing music has to one in 2011: Kill People. Burn Shit. Fuck School. It's a song by Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, whose apathetic anarchy is perhaps a more fitting, if unwitting, soundtrack to the riots of last week than the Clash's...This, though, is apparently what rebellion sounds like in 2011: dead-eyed, mob-like and opportunistic. There's certainly no one else currently trying to articulate anything more meaningful in pop culture.It's a strange choice of example. Odd Future's nihilistic art-rap is a million miles from the buzzing UK hip hop and grime scenes. While it is easy to underestimate the importance of music outside one's own scene or era (and while Murison has a point about the state of much mainstream music) you really don't have to look far to see that there is a wealth of political expression happening in UK music.
Hip hop and grime occupies much the same space today as punk did in the eighties. As with punk, some appears pretty much apolitical, some expresses a purely emotional response to a contemporary situation, and some provides as biting a political analysis as one would hope to find anywhere.
Back in February, Dan Hancox wrote of how Lethal Bizzle's Pow—a track whose 'riotous energy' was considered so incendiary even the instrumental was banned from clubs—had become the unofficial anthem of the student movement.
Last week, mere days after the riots, Hancox wrote in the Guardian about the UK rap/grime scene's response to the riots:
Two decades ago Chuck D famously described rap music as “the black CNN”—a means of describing the kind of daily lives which the real news network would never care to investigate; by this token, grime and UK rap is the BBC News 24 of the British urban working-class—not necessarily black, not necessarily young, but mostly so....
Grime describes the world politicians of all parties have ignored—its misery (eg Dizzee Rascal's Sitting Here), its volatile energy (Lethal Bizzle's Pow), its gleeful rowdiness (Mr Wong's Orchestra Boroughs), its self-knowledge (Wiley's Oxford Street), its local pride (Southside Allstars' Southside Run Tings).But grime not only describes the realities of young people today, it has also been vocal in the responses and explanations of the riots. As Hancox writes, grime artists have been involved in political debates for some time Remember Lethal Bizzle calling Cameron a 'donut'? He also said “if you don't pay attention to the youth, it's going to get silly”. And it did.
If it seems a little premature for journalists to be asking why UK rap hasn't responded to the riots, it is also unfounded. Writing only two days after the heaviest night of rioting across London, Dan Hancox summarised the musical responses so far:
In only two days we have had Genesis Elijah's raw, captivating a cappella UK Riots...Bashy and Ed Sheeran's Angels Can't Fly seems a bit rushed, but then it presumably was...Reveal's I Predict a Riot, with crushing inevitability, samples Kaiser Chiefs, but is otherwise powerful...Meanwhile dancehall artist Fresharda's response, Tottenham Riot, calls for “more ghetto yout' [who] stand firm and stay strong/ planning dem future in education”.
The most extraordinary of the bunch is also the most full-on. They Will Not Control Us, a snarling litany of dispossesion and rage against politicians, police and the media...Talking about firing RPGs at parliament is not what you could call a constructive political response, but it would be ridiculous to say the song is not explicitly political—in its broad-ranging, nihilistic anger against all authority.These responses are hardly indicative of an apathetic, unengaged youth culture. At the time they are happening, such music scenes rarely appear as cohesive cultural responses to the particular social and political context in which they appear. This is as true of punk then as it is of grime now. But the energy is unmistakable, and to dismiss hip hop and grime as means of political expression because it has no coherent voice is a category mistake.
All over the world, wherever there is social deprivation and large numbers of young people, a unique local rap scene is almost certain to be found. From the banlieues of Paris to the refugee camps of Palestine, from the streets of London to the projects of Los Angeles, from the barrios of Caracas to the townships of South Africa, hip hop has been the soundtrack to social unrest.
Some of these scenes are chronicled in Sujatha Fernandes Close to the Edge: In Search of the Global Hip Hop Generation. She writes:
Rage was a defining feature of our times, and hip hop was a tool for expressing, catalyzing and creatively transforming that rage into social criticism and musical innovation."Fernandes is writing about 90s LA, but it could just as easily be London, 2011.
Visit the Guardian to read the full Krissi Murison and Dan Hancox articles. See Dan Hancox's blog for more, including this excellent article at Mute on grime and the 'EMA kids'
Sujatha Fernandes' Close to the Edge will be published on 3rd October.
White Riot: Punk and the Politics of Race, edited by Stephen Duncombe and Maxwell Tremblay, is out on 5th September.
Tamar Shlaim @'Verso'
2kolderz - They Will Not Control Us
Free at last...
wm3org WM3.org
Everyone's screaming in joy! It's done. 18 years too long #wm3
not_me jf
this is why you dont execute convicted murderers #wm3 cnn.com/2011/CRIME/08/…
Remember The WSJ's Unhinged Hacking Editorial?
Slate's Jack Shafer raises a good point in suggesting exeuctives at the Wall Street Journal editorial page explain themselves and the defensive essay they published last month, lashing out at Rupert Murdoch’s critics amidst the News Corp. phone-hacking meltdown. The screed also defended the Journal's former publisher, suggesting he was no way involved in the British scandal.
Additional hacking revelations this week though, now suggest almost everything in the Journal attack piece was off the mark.
Superficially, the Journal’s defense of Les Hinton, the newspaper’s former publisher, appears to have been especially wrong [emphasis added]:
The problem, as Shafer explains, is that a recently revealed 2007 letter from Clive Goodman, a central player in the News of the World hacking scandal, suggests Hinton, who oversaw Murdoch’s tabloid before becoming the Journal publisher, was informed about widespread hacking activities at News Corp.
We eagerly await a follow-up editorial from the Journal.
Eric Boehlert @'Media Matters'
Additional hacking revelations this week though, now suggest almost everything in the Journal attack piece was off the mark.
Superficially, the Journal’s defense of Les Hinton, the newspaper’s former publisher, appears to have been especially wrong [emphasis added]:
In his resignation letter, Mr. Hinton said he knew nothing about wide-scale hacking and had testified truthfully to Parliament in 2007 and 2009. We have no reason to doubt him, especially based on our own experience working for him.See, Journal editorial writers have worked with Hinton. He was their colleague. Therefore they believed Hinton’s version of hacking events.
The problem, as Shafer explains, is that a recently revealed 2007 letter from Clive Goodman, a central player in the News of the World hacking scandal, suggests Hinton, who oversaw Murdoch’s tabloid before becoming the Journal publisher, was informed about widespread hacking activities at News Corp.
We eagerly await a follow-up editorial from the Journal.
Eric Boehlert @'Media Matters'
Operation Weeting officer arrested
The male Detective Constable, aged 51 years, was arrested at work yesterday afternoon (Thursday 18 August 2011).
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers, in charge of Operation Weeting, said: "I made it very clear when I took on this investigation the need for operational and information security. It is hugely disappointing that this may not have been adhered to.
"The MPS takes the un-authorised disclosure of information extremely seriously and has acted swiftly in making this arrest."
@'Metropolitan Police'
For Kaggsy XXX
Mal Mixing Mal (Steven Mallinder) came round yesterday to work on an idea for a Wrangler remix of Shatterproof (by John Foxx and The Maths). Mal co-founded Caberet Voltaire in 1973, and they are one of my favorite electronic bands ever. We had a great day playing with the VP330 vocoder and the Linn
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Via
'If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.' - Dorothy Parker
WikiLeaks: Fissures Over South American Left Integration
Over the past few years, the international left has derived much satisfaction from the course of South American political and economic integration. The novelty of such integration is that it has proceeded along progressive lines and has been pushed by regional leaders associated with the so-called "Pink Tide." With so many leftist leaders in power, it is plausible to surmise that a left bloc of countries might challenge Washington's long-term hemispheric agenda. Yet, behind all of the lofty rhetoric and idealism, serious fissures remain within South America's leftist movement, both within individual countries and within the larger regional milieu.
That, at least, is the impression I got from reading U.S. State Department cables recently declassified by whistle-blowing outfit WikiLeaks. Take, for example, the Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva administration in Brazil, which at times encouraged a "hostile" climate against the Free Trade Area of the Americas or FTAA, a corporately-sponsored plan backed by Washington, while on other occasions encouraging "public doubt and confusion through its own often-conflicting statements" about the accord. Behind the scenes, the Brazilian government was much more divided on the matter than commonly portrayed, torn between its South American loyalties on the one hand and the desire to gain access to the lucrative U.S. market for agricultural and industrial goods on the other.
In 2003, the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia noted that "Brazil's political goals, which include a leadership role in South America along with a strong focus on development and the social agenda, sometimes clash in its pursuit of certain national economic interests." Cautiously, Brazil conducted sensitive negotiations with Washington over the FTAA. Lula's position was somewhat delicate: while the president needed a substantial export boost to fund his social agenda, producers were fearful about facing increased competition.
Across the border in Argentina, Lula could count on political ally Néstor Kirchner, and as a result the prospects for further integration through South American trade bloc Mercosur looked bright. On the other hand, however, Mercosur remained "more important as a political project than an economic one," and virtually all Brazilians recognized that, in the long term, Mercosur would not offer a viable long-term solution to Brazil's export needs...
That, at least, is the impression I got from reading U.S. State Department cables recently declassified by whistle-blowing outfit WikiLeaks. Take, for example, the Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva administration in Brazil, which at times encouraged a "hostile" climate against the Free Trade Area of the Americas or FTAA, a corporately-sponsored plan backed by Washington, while on other occasions encouraging "public doubt and confusion through its own often-conflicting statements" about the accord. Behind the scenes, the Brazilian government was much more divided on the matter than commonly portrayed, torn between its South American loyalties on the one hand and the desire to gain access to the lucrative U.S. market for agricultural and industrial goods on the other.
In 2003, the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia noted that "Brazil's political goals, which include a leadership role in South America along with a strong focus on development and the social agenda, sometimes clash in its pursuit of certain national economic interests." Cautiously, Brazil conducted sensitive negotiations with Washington over the FTAA. Lula's position was somewhat delicate: while the president needed a substantial export boost to fund his social agenda, producers were fearful about facing increased competition.
Across the border in Argentina, Lula could count on political ally Néstor Kirchner, and as a result the prospects for further integration through South American trade bloc Mercosur looked bright. On the other hand, however, Mercosur remained "more important as a political project than an economic one," and virtually all Brazilians recognized that, in the long term, Mercosur would not offer a viable long-term solution to Brazil's export needs...
Continue reading
Nikolas Kozloff @'HuffPo'
Politics: Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?
That, it now appears, is exactly how the Securities and Exchange Commission has been treating the Wall Street criminals who cratered the global economy a few years back. For the past two decades, according to a whistle-blower at the SEC who recently came forward to Congress, the agency has been systematically destroying records of its preliminary investigations once they are closed. By whitewashing the files of some of the nation's worst financial criminals, the SEC has kept an entire generation of federal investigators in the dark about past inquiries into insider trading, fraud and market manipulation against companies like Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and AIG. With a few strokes of the keyboard, the evidence gathered during thousands of investigations – $8,000 ... including Madoff," as one high-ranking SEC official put it during a panicked meeting about the destruction – have apparently disappeared forever into the wormhole of history.
Under a deal the SEC worked out with the National Archives and Records Administration, all of the agency's records – "including case files relating to preliminary investigations" – are supposed to be maintained for at least 25 years. But the SEC, using history-altering practices that for once actually deserve the overused and usually hysterical term "Orwellian," devised an elaborate and possibly illegal system under which staffers were directed to dispose of the documents from any preliminary inquiry that did not receive approval from senior staff to become a full-blown, formal investigation. Amazingly, the wholesale destruction of the cases – known as MUIs, or "Matters Under Inquiry" – was not something done on the sly, in secret. The enforcement division of the SEC even spelled out the procedure in writing, on the commission's internal website. "After you have closed a MUI that has not become an investigation," the site advised staffers, "you should dispose of any documents obtained in connection with the MUI."
Many of the destroyed files involved companies and individuals who would later play prominent roles in the economic meltdown of 2008. Two MUIs involving con artist Bernie Madoff vanished. So did a 2002 inquiry into financial fraud at Lehman Brothers, as well as a 2005 case of insider trading at the same soon-to-be-bankrupt bank. A 2009 preliminary investigation of insider trading by Goldman Sachs was deleted, along with records for at least three cases involving the infamous hedge fund SAC Capital.
The widespread destruction of records was brought to the attention of Congress in July, when an SEC attorney named Darcy Flynn decided to blow the whistle. According to Flynn, who was responsible for helping to manage the commission's records, the SEC has been destroying records of preliminary investigations since at least 1993. After he alerted NARA to the problem, Flynn reports, senior staff at the SEC scrambled to hide the commission's improprieties.
As a federally protected whistle-blower, Flynn is not permitted to speak to the press. But in evidence he presented to the SEC's inspector general and three congressional committees earlier this summer, the 13-year veteran of the agency paints a startling picture of a federal police force that has effectively been conquered by the financial criminals it is charged with investigating. In at least one case, according to Flynn, investigators at the SEC found their desire to investigate an influential bank thwarted by senior officials in the enforcement division – whose director turned around and accepted a lucrative job from the very same bank they had been prevented from investigating. In another case, the agency farmed out its inquiry to a private law firm – one hired by the company under investigation. The outside firm, unsurprisingly, concluded that no further investigation of its client was necessary. To complete the bureaucratic laundering process, Flynn says, the SEC dropped the case and destroyed the files...
Continue reading
Matt Taibbi @'Rolling Stone'
Jeff Tweedy on 'Nevermind'
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DavidAllenGreen David Allen Green
Cameron really is our most clueless Prime Minister since Major. “It is time for our country to take stock.”
Cameron really is our most clueless Prime Minister since Major. “It is time for our country to take stock.”
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