Sting Sings Like He’s Going to Live Forever
2 hours ago
Saturday, 10 September 2011
Egyptian protesters break into Israeli embassy in Cairo
A group of about 30 protesters broke into the Israeli embassy in Cairo on Friday and threw hundreds of documents out of the windows, Egyptian and Israeli officials have said.
Hundreds of protesters had been converging on the 21-story building housing the embassy throughout the afternoon and into the night, tearing down large sections of a security wall. For hours, Egyptian security forces made no attempt to intervene.
Just before midnight, a group of protesters reached a room on one of the embassy's lower floors at the top of the building and began dumping Hebrew-language documents from the windows, according to an Egyptian security official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
In Jerusalem, an Israeli official confirmed the embassy had been broken into, saying it appeared the group reached a waiting room on the lower floor. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to release the information.
Since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, calls have grown in Egypt for ending the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, a pact that has never had the support of ordinary Egyptians. Anger increased last month after Israeli forces – responding to a cross-border attack – mistakenly killed five Egyptian police officers near the border.
Seven months after the popular uprising, Egyptians are still pressing for a list of changes, including more transparent trials of former regime figures accused of corruption and a clear timetable for parliamentary elections.
Egyptians have grown increasingly distrustful of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which took control of the country when Mubarak was forced out on 11 February after nearly three decades in power. The council, headed by Mubarak's defence minister, Muhammad Hussein Tantawi, has voiced its support for the revolution and those who called for democracy and justice.
But activists accuse it of remaining too close to Mubarak's regime and practicing similarly repressive policies, including abusing detainees. The trials of thousands of civilians in military courts has also angered activists.
Protesters marched to the Israeli embassy from Cairo's Tahrir square, where thousands more demonstrated against Egypt's ruling generals. Demonstrators in Cairo also converged on the state TV building, a central courthouse and the interior ministry, a hated symbol of abuses by police and security forces under Mubarak. Protesters covered one of the ministry's gates with graffiti and tore off parts of the large ministry seal.
Protests also took place in Alexandria, Suez and several other cities. Up to 90 people were injured, the health ministry said.
@'The Guardian'
Crisis of Capitalism
In this short RSA Animate, radical sociologist David Harvey asks if it is time to look beyond capitalism, towards a new social order that would allow us to live within a system that could be responsible, just and humane.
(Thanx GKB!)
(Thanx GKB!)
LED Throwies
youtube uploader kinross19 writes:
"LED Throwies are LEDs that have a battery and a magnet attached so that you can stick them anywhere that you could with a magnet. They are the coolest thing I have seen all year.
To find out how to make them go here:
http://www.instructables.com/ex/i/7DBB34EAEDFF1028A1FC001143E7E506/?ALLSTEPS
via
Friday, 9 September 2011
David Leigh in denial on his WikiLeaks fuck up...
david leigh wrote:
Sep 9th 2011 8:59 GMT
I want to be informative and I'm sorry if my exasperation shows through. The Guardian published a book in February, 7 months ago. It mentioned a password which Assange of Wikileaks had assured us was a defunct gateway to a file no longer on a server. No harm came of the publication. Assange was quite untroubled by the old password publication. He made no complaint then or later. Indeed as recently as August, he was trying to persuade the Guardian to work with him again, telling us we were his 'natural ally'. Unbeknown to us, however, and for unknown reasons, Assange also re-used the password to a file called z.gpg which he posted online among a batch of others. No-one of the public knew what was in it or how to locate it. Then suddenly, in late August, a quarrel flared up between Assange and his former partner and rival Daniel Domscheit-Berg. Assange says he feared Berg knew how to get access to the cables file. Apparently in order to steal a march on him, he dropped hints about the file's online location, deliberately ensured it was surfaced thanks to the 'rumors', and then carried out his plan to publish the entire file in searchable [and unredacted] form himself. He tried to claim he had been 'forced' to publish thus because of the Guardian book - a fairly transparent excuse. Those are the facts to the best of my knowledge.
Via
Via
9/11 as political propaganda
In stark terms, Providing for The Common Defense highlights the impacts that ten years of hard fighting have had on America's military. In the video, Armed Services Chairman McKeon previews questions that Committee members will be asking this fall of our nation's brightest national security minds; "what if we're attacked in some other area, what is our military going to be able to do if we keep cutting it... tell me the missions we've done in the last couple of years that we won't be asked to do in the next couple of years."
HASCRepublicans
Jon Stewart to Host Q&A With Former Nirvana Members on Nevermind Anniversary Night
Mark Hogan @'Pitchfork'
Why Nevermind is overrated
I guess before the death threats start pouring in and I have to undergo plastic surgery, submit myself to the witness protection scheme and relocate to Huddersfield, I should make one thing clear: Nevermind isn't a bad album. It is full of memorable hooks, perky riffs (even the ones that haven't been lifted off Rainbow or Killing Joke) and exciting galloping beats. It is, in the main, a collection of pretty grunge songs that are nice to sing along to. It has one generation-unifying and genre-codifying all time anthem/irritating student disco staple in Smells Like Teen Spirit, the truly sublime Something In The Way and the genuinely exciting Territorial Pissings. Mainly however it plays to the gallery and is something of a failure (or at the very least a cop-out). It's supposed to be a sardonic dig at mainstream, MTV and FM radio culture but it shamelessly fits very neatly into the schedules of both institutions. If it had a subversive message it must have been generally too cryptic to be understood, as it was a massive hit amongst the jockish, mainstream types that they had always defined themselves in opposition to. This happened because the album was a massive compromise made to reach a mainstream audience. And it was a compromise agreed to by a sensitive, artistic, troubled frontman after he signed to a major label record deal - something he always regretted.
Your relationship to Nevermind perhaps depends on how old you were when it came out. Anyone younger than 35 is guaranteed to have felt full impact by being introduced to it as an angst-ridden teenager. As a gateway from whatever corporate nonsense Radio1 has chosen as its token 'heavy' guitar act of any given year - Green Day, Muse, Kings of Leon et al - into the weird and wonderful world of heavy, underground, alternative, psychedelic, mind expanding rock, it still remains a rite of passage. But to anyone who had been following grunge for a few years back then, it represented nothing more than the genre's cheap ascent into the mainstream.
2. Other bands did it better
Nirvana may have had more of an impact on the state of mainstream metal and stadium sized alternative rock in the 1990s than any other band, except perhaps Metallica, but their roots were firmly in the more obscure American post-punk underground of the 1980s. Acts such as Pixies (who they lifted their sense of high contrast quiet loud quiet dynamics from), Sonic Youth, the Butthole Surfers, The Dwarves, Big Black, Pussy Galore and Flipper were cult acts gigging relentlessly around the US in the late 1980s when bands such as Green River and Mudhoney gave a more classicist Neil Young, Sex Pistols and Black Sabbath-influenced shot in the arm to the scene. But Nirvana's success helped to partially decimate this forward-looking music, replacing it with retro bands and arena alt-rock acts.
But before all this Nirvana weren't much to write home about. Their debut Bleach does not stand up to the early output of Mudhoney. Sure, Negative Creep is a great track but it is blown clean out of the water by the monumentally unhinged swamp metal assault of Sliding In And Out Of Grace. The scene was already becoming overcrowded with so-called grunge bands like Tad, Jesus Lizard and Pearl Jam; Nirvana realised they had to step their game up if they were not to become also-rans. Frontman Kurt Cobain stopped hiding his clear gift as a pop-hook writer under a bushel, they signed to Geffen and drafted in producer Butch Vig who polished everything up to a high shine, ready for their musical ascent. It's just that Cobain had not even considered what this kind of success would entail and more importantly was simply not cut out for it, whether he wanted it or not.
3. In Utero was better
Almost immediately, Cobain quite clearly had misgivings about Nevermind, and what he had created with it, but what was done was done. Personally, my main reason for disliking the album is not the fact that it is - relatively speaking - bland and a compromise, but that it contributed to his subsequent death.
When Kurt Cobain took his own life due to a horrific combination of bad company, bad drugs, an inability to deal with fame and untreated depression, he had really only just begun to reveal his true genius in the form of the vastly superior album In Utero. Recorded by alternative-rock hero Steve Albini, it is a document of a splintering personality, expending the last of his energy in one final creative surge. The undeniable, John Lennon-esque knack for a pop hook is still present on tracks such as Heart Shaped Box but his lyrics were next-level poetry and would be pored over for clues to what went wrong much more than his suicide note would be. But nudging up to this and All Apologies were Radio Friendly Unit Shifter, Scentless Apprentice and Milk It - primal screams of rage emitted too late to do him any use. Ironically, they do reveal to us in a very visceral manner exactly how he felt himself about the pop polish of Nevermind.
4. Do you really need the box-set?
The thing is – it doesn't matter what I think about Nevermind. You almost certainly already have it. And my real point is: it's not that good that you need to buy it all over again. The really sad thing is, if he was around to see this dead-eyed, late capitalist, mercenary squeezing of every last red cent out of his band's reputation and fan base in the form of utterly unnecessary reissues, Cobain would probably pull the trigger all over again. If you genuinely feel you love this band, don't buy the Nevermind reissue. Instead try exploring the back catalogue of one of the many bands Kurt Cobain obsessed over such as Jesus Lizard, The Raincoats, The Meat Puppets, The Vaselines, Joy Division, Pixies, The Butthole Surfers, Earth, Bikini Kill, The Melvins or Daniel Johnson. Or at the very, very least dig out your copy of In Utero.
John Doran @'Virgin Media'
My thoughts exactly!
Missiles looted from Tripoli arms warehouse
(Click to enlarge)
A potent stash of Russian-made surface-to-air missiles is missing from a huge Tripoli weapons warehouse amid reports of weapons looting across war-torn Libya. They are Grinch SA-24 shoulder-launched missiles, also known as Igla-S missiles, the equivalent of U.S.-made Stinger missiles.
A CNN team and Human Rights Watch found dozens of empty crates marked with packing lists and inventory numbers that identified the items as Igla-S surface-to-air missiles.
The list for one box, for example, written in English and Russian, said it had contained two missiles, with inventory number "Missile 9M342," and a power source, inventory number "Article 9B238."
Grinch SA-24s are designed to target front-line aircraft, helicopters, cruise missiles and drones. They can shoot down a plane flying as high as 11,000 feet and can travel 19,000 feet straight out.
Fighters aligned with the National Transitional Council and others swiped armaments from the storage facility, witnesses told Human Rights Watch. The warehouse is located near a base of the Khamis Brigade, a special forces unit in Gadhafi's military, in the southeastern part of the capital.The warehouse contains mortars and artillery rounds, but there are empty crates for those items as well. There are also empty boxes for another surface-to-air missile, the SA-7.
Peter Bouckaert, Human Rights Watch emergencies director, told CNN he has seen the same pattern in armories looted elsewhere in Libya, noting that "in every city we arrive, the first thing to disappear are the surface-to-air missiles."
He said such missiles can fetch many thousands of dollars on the black market.
"We are talking about some 20,000 surface-to-air missiles in all of Libya, and I've seen cars packed with them." he said. "They could turn all of North Africa into a no-fly zone."
There was no immediate comment from NTC officials.
The lack of security at the weapons site raises concerns about stability in post-Gadhafi Libya and whether the new NTC leadership is doing enough to stop the weapons from getting into the wrong hands...
Continue reading
Ben Wedeman and Ingrid Formanek @'CNN'
Thursday, 8 September 2011
Adrian Sherwood (On-U Sound) @ Dubspot! Live Streaming Workshop 09/08 + Dub Invasion
Q&A: Adrian Sherwood On The State Of Dub, On-U Sounds' 30th Birthday, And His Return To America
Guatemala's Colom: Users share blame for drug violence
Consumers of illegal drugs share the blame for drug-related violence and killings, Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom has told BBC Mundo.
"We've been called a narco-state, but consumers, they are narcos too," said Mr Colom. He was speaking a few days before Guatemalans go to the polls on Sunday to elect his successor.
Whoever wins will face the challenge of rising violence, much of which is attributed to local and Mexican gangs.
Mexican cartels have expanded operations into the Central American nation, which is an important transit point for drugs smuggled from South America to the US.
Several presidential candidates are on the ballot paper, among them retired general and front-runner Otto Perez Molina and Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberto Menchu.
But after months of wrangling, Mr Colom's former wife, Sandra Torres, will not be contesting the election.
On Monday, her supporters abandoned their final appeal against her exclusion.
It was the culmination of a political drama that began in March, when Ms Torres filed for divorce, a move critics said was to avoid a constitutional ban on close relatives of the president running for the post.
Guatemalan judges ruled that despite her divorce, Ms Torres' candidacy still violated the constitution and she was therefore ineligible.
Up and down Lack of security is among voters' main concerns, according to recent opinion polls. Some candidates, including Mr Perez Molina, have accused President Colom of not being tough enough on organised crime.
Mr Colom, who was elected in 2007, said his term in office had seen a fall in the murder rate, while drugs worth some $10bn (£6bn) had been seized.
"Honestly, if you compare the results of this government with previous ones, there is no comparison regarding seizures and arrests," he told BBC Mundo's Ignacio de los Reyes. Mr Colom was also clear that Guatemala alone could not tackle drug-related violence.
It was up to countries where drugs were consumed to control guns, funds and the chemicals that go towards producing drugs, to try to reduce consumption, he said.
"Cocaine goes up and guns come down," he said, referring to the trafficking of drugs through Central America and Mexico to the US, and the smuggling of illegal weapons over the US border.
@'BBC'
Phone hacking: even more News International emails deleted
The extra deletions, requested between December 2009 and June this year, included emails from the inbox of a user who had not accessed his account for eight years.
The deletions to the eight-year-old account were carried out a few months after the phone hacking scandal reignited amid reports that hacking at the News of the World was more prevalent than previously thought.
Some deletion requests related to two personal folders and a tranche of “bad or corrupted” files.
Many of the other deletions, performed by HCL Technologies, were carried out before News International ordered its staff in an internal memo to stop deleting emails earlier this year.
Keith Vaz, a Labour MP and chairman of the home affairs select committee, said the disclosures were “concerning” and that the committee would investigate the removal of any information that “pointed to the prevalence of phone hacking” at News International.
Nine previous requests to delete emails – between April last year and July this year – were already identified before lawyers for Delhi-based HCL Technologies wrote to Mr Vaz yesterday with the new information.
Mr Vaz said: “The request for deletion of folders and emails by News International is concerning.
“The committee will continue to investigate the issue of phone hacking and the removal of any information that could possibly point to the prevalence of phone hacking by those working in the organisation.”
The new letter to Mr Vaz shows that on Dec 9 2009, News International requested deletion of emails from the inbox of a user who had not accessed his email account for eight years.
On Feb 24 last year, the company asked for the deletion of personal folders under the name “Gabriel/uploaded”. A personal folder was also removed on Sept 28 last year.
The most recent request came on June 29 this year, when the company asked for deletion of “certain bad or corrupted files”.
HCL, which provides services under contract to News International, informed the committee last month that it was aware of the deletion of hundreds of thousands of emails on nine occasions between April 2010 and July 2011, but said it did not know of anything “untoward” behind the requests.
John-Paul Ford Rojas, Andrew Hough and Mark Hughes @'The Telegraph'
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