Friday, 7 October 2011
Seemingly Bogus Website Uses 'Occupy Party' Name... To Sell Ads
Registered here in Australia!
(Thanx Sander!)
(Thanx Sander!)
Gruen Planet | The Pitch - Trust Murdoch
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/gruenplanet What happens when your name is your brand and that name has become, well, a little bit toxic. We've challenged our agencies to come up with a campaign to re-establish "Murdoch as a name everyone can trust."
Syria's electronic army
In the midst of a virtual blackout on the city of Hama, citizen videos - often shaky and unverifiable - document the brutality of the Syrian military's crackdown on the city, ongoing since July 31 - the day before the start of Ramadan - while online campaigns, hosted on Facebook and Twitter, aim to draw attention to events on the ground. The narrative: Syrians are suffering and want the world to take notice.
At the same time, and often on the same networks, a different story can be seen, as Syrians in favour of the Assad regime stake out online ground in attempt to shift the narrative in their favour. And though there are individuals who post supportive sentiments about Assad, the overwhelming majority of pro-regime content online appears well-coordinated; the work of organised groups coming together to support the beleaguered president.
The Syrian electronic army
Tunisia's Ben Ali promised a more open internet just one day before he was ousted. In Egypt, Mubarak sought a different strategy, shutting down the majority of the internet for a week in the hopes of disabling activist networks. Syria has taken a different approach to the internet altogether, first unblocking popular social networking sites, then throwing support to pro-regime hackers in the hopes of countering opposition forces online.
As Helmi Noman has documented, the Syrian Electronic Army - a cabal of hackers, acknowledged as a positive force by Assad himself in a June 20 speech - has overtaken certain Facebook pages, such as those belonging to French and US presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Barack Obama, TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey, and the page for ABC News and flooding them with comments like "we love Bashar al-Assad" and "I live in Syria, stop lying, nothing is happening in Syria".
More recently, the group has targeted the US Department of Treasury, in light of US government plans to impose further sanctions on the Syrian regime.
In addition to flooding Facebook pages, it has coordinated hacking attempts from their own Facebook page, and have defaced or disabled a number of websites. Although Facebook has removed a number of their pages, a quick search of the site brings up numerous new ones, suggesting a strong sense of determination.
Though the "electronic army" doesn't seem to have much of a presence on Twitter, other groups vie for influence there by flooding popular hashtags with largely irrelevant content, such as photographs of the Syrian landscape, often accompanied by other, unrelated hashtags...
Continue reading
Jillian C. York @'Al Jazeera'
The Dandy Warhols wade into the Primal Scream Tory row
The Dandy Warhols have followed Primal Scream's lead in attacking the Conservatives for using their music at the Tory party conference.
Yesterday (October 5), in a case of mistaken identity, Primal Scream believed the Tories had used their track 'Rocks' during Home Secretary Theresa May's speech, causing them to write a furious missive saying they were "totally disgusted" by the news.
But the song actually played was The Dandy Warhols' 'Bohemian Like You', and the Portland, Oregon band are just as unimpressed to discover they were the real soundtrack to the event.
Frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor took to the band's website to launch his own tirade against the Conservatives, saying he was so angry, "I wanna puke". He wrote:
Yesterday (October 5), in a case of mistaken identity, Primal Scream believed the Tories had used their track 'Rocks' during Home Secretary Theresa May's speech, causing them to write a furious missive saying they were "totally disgusted" by the news.
But the song actually played was The Dandy Warhols' 'Bohemian Like You', and the Portland, Oregon band are just as unimpressed to discover they were the real soundtrack to the event.
Frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor took to the band's website to launch his own tirade against the Conservatives, saying he was so angry, "I wanna puke". He wrote:
Why don't these assholes have right-wing bands make them some right-wing music for their right-wing jerkoff politics? Oh, because right-wing people aren’t creative, visionary or any fun to be around.It wasn't just the right wing that came under fire, though, as Taylor-Taylor went on to rant: "Jesus, I tend to really dislike ANY people who take sides in politics. It is the single greatest contributor to getting nothing done. Fuck 'politics'."
@'NME'
Hmmm! that last sentence really negates all you said before Mr Asshat!
'After all, stupidity—and I don’t mean ignorance—is a central issue of our time.' – William Gaddis
'Carpenter's Gothic' is up there in my all time fave books...
International: Pump v. Well (1932)
Millions and millions of loudspeakers flood the U. S. with a mighty, surging bath of warm, sweet music. At the pump is Radio; the wellspring is Tin Pan Alley. Without the well, the pump is not much good. Both realize it but they do not love each other. Last week pump and well— the National Association of Broadcasters and the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers—came to grips.
Tin Pan Alley is sadly aware that Radio has virtually plugged up its oldtime outlets, sheet music and gramophone discs. The average music publisher used to get $175,000 a year from disc sales. He now gets about 10% of this. No longer does a song hit sell a million copies. The copious stream of music poured out by Radio puts a song quickly to death. The average song's life has dwindled from 18 months to 90 days; composers are forced to turn out a dozen songs a year instead of the oldtime two or three.
The American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers is Tin Pan Alley's clearing house. Its 800 composer & publisher-members own the copyrights to nearly all the music composed in the U. S. since 1914. It is affiliated with similar societies abroad. To many radio listeners and broadcasters the phrase "by special permission of the copyright owners" has been irksome. A. S. C. A. & P. used to insist upon it, permitting no facetious trifling with the announcement. Lately, however, it lifted this requirement. Most of its songs may be performed without special permission, but a number are restricted, for example musical comedy songs which the producers do not wish to be too soon familiarized. On the current special list are also Deems Taylor's Through the Looking Glass, his operas Peter Ibbetson and The King's Henchman; George Gershwin's An American in Paris, Rhapsody in Blue, Second Rhapsody; Ferde Grofe's Five Pictures of the Grand Canyon and Metropolis; seven songs sung by Sir Harry Lauder. who will sing no song previously broadcast...
Tin Pan Alley is sadly aware that Radio has virtually plugged up its oldtime outlets, sheet music and gramophone discs. The average music publisher used to get $175,000 a year from disc sales. He now gets about 10% of this. No longer does a song hit sell a million copies. The copious stream of music poured out by Radio puts a song quickly to death. The average song's life has dwindled from 18 months to 90 days; composers are forced to turn out a dozen songs a year instead of the oldtime two or three.
The American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers is Tin Pan Alley's clearing house. Its 800 composer & publisher-members own the copyrights to nearly all the music composed in the U. S. since 1914. It is affiliated with similar societies abroad. To many radio listeners and broadcasters the phrase "by special permission of the copyright owners" has been irksome. A. S. C. A. & P. used to insist upon it, permitting no facetious trifling with the announcement. Lately, however, it lifted this requirement. Most of its songs may be performed without special permission, but a number are restricted, for example musical comedy songs which the producers do not wish to be too soon familiarized. On the current special list are also Deems Taylor's Through the Looking Glass, his operas Peter Ibbetson and The King's Henchman; George Gershwin's An American in Paris, Rhapsody in Blue, Second Rhapsody; Ferde Grofe's Five Pictures of the Grand Canyon and Metropolis; seven songs sung by Sir Harry Lauder. who will sing no song previously broadcast...
Steve Jobs: The man who changed everything
When I first started at Creative Review, in the mid-90s, we used to hammer out our stories on typewriters. The deputy editor would mark up these 'galleys' with typesetting instructions and, every evening, a man would come up on the train from our printer in Brighton, put these sheaves of paper in a leather satchel and take them back to be set. Also in his satchel were the day's layouts - marked up sheets of paper onto which 'bromide' headlines and photocopied columns would be affixed along with transparencies or flat artwork to be scanned. And then came the Mac.
No doubt every one of our readers of a similar vintage - be they designers, art directors, filmmakers, photographers, illustrators or writers - can look back and reflect on their own Apple-driven upheaval not just in how they work but also what they work on. But no matter how old you may be, Steve Jobs will have changed the life of every one of our readers, even those who profess to hate Apple and all it stands for.
Following the advent of the Mac, almost every aspect of the production of visual communications was changed for ever. Of course it wasn't all down to Jobs: many others helped build Apple and let's not forget the contributions of Jobs' contemporaries at the likes of Xerox, Adobe, Aldus, Macromedia, Quark and a host of other start-ups. Crafts such as typesetting, retouching and illustration, previously the domain of highly-trained specialists, were suddenly accessible to all. On one machine, we could design a typeface, retouch an image, create an illustration, layout a poster and edit a film.
But just because we could, it didn't necessarily mean we should. Thanks to the Mac, designers could do it all - but for no more money and with no more hours in the day. For all the enormous and undoubted benefits that the Mac and the digital revolution it symbolised brought to the creative industries, it has also resulted in the undervaluation of many of the crafts on which it relies. The Mac, the DTP Revolution, whatever you want to call it, drew back the curtain. Now anyone with a computer could set a line of type, design a logo, touch up an image. In every revolution there are winners and losers.
And yet would anyone want to go back to those pre-Mac days? Creative Review readers are, in the main, Apple people. We stuck by Apple in the dark days of the clones before Steve (and a certain Jonathan Ive) returned to lead us (by the wallet) into the sunny uplands of the iWorld. We had Macs, the suits had PCs: they symbolised the great divide. They were 'ours' and, despite their faults, we loved them. Before iTunes and iPods, before the phones and the pads, we embraced Apple and we never let it go.
As TBWA Chiat Day's famous campaign had it, with an Apple Mac you could 'Think Different'. Such innate understanding of the power of his brand is perhaps the other reason why Jobs was held in such high regard by our industry.
It has often been said that Apple is not a technology company but a design company. It redesigned the way we live and gave us the tools to do it. Its products were not just the best looking but also offered the best user experience. The interfaces, the materials, even the boxes the products came in were leagues ahead of the competition, as was the advertising.
Jobs and Apple created their own exquisitely designed universe. As a result he will be remembered not just as the man at the heart of revolutionising the creative industries but also perhaps as its ideal client: a man in charge of one of the world's biggest companies who understood the power of what we do, invested in it and championed it.
He got it. And he got us.
Patrick Burgoyne @'Creative Review'
McKenzie Wark: 'Zuccotti Park, a psychogeography'
The confrontations with the police usually get the most attention, but they're not the only thing going on at Occupy Wall Street. I went down to Zuccotti Park at about 9PM on Wednesday, 5th October after putting the kids to bed. I was alarmed by stuff on the twitter feed that detailed incidents of contact with the police but which were not clear about the location. I wanted to make sure our Park was still there.
Just off the subway, and heading down Church Street, I caught a glimpse of a march going North, up the street parallel to the east. I saw a mass of closely ranked bodies and banners and heard some vigorous chants. I wasn't sure where they'd be going, as Wall street is to the south. I decided to keep going down Church to Zuccotti Park and maybe catch up with that group later.
I could hear the Park before I saw it. At the western end, about a hundred people were chanting, singing, dancing, banging on drums. I hung out with the for a while. This crowd was young, fun, and a bit crusty. The financial district is usually so dead after working hours. Even the idea of a party at night here is something.
It was hard to work my way into the Park. Piles of stuff were arranged around the planting beds. Mostly disassembled tents. The police have been pretty clear that they will not tolerate “structures” without a permit, and apparently a tent is a “structure.”
A young man lay flat on his back in a sleeping bag. I narrowly missed kicking him in the head on my way by. He looked exhausted, as did a few others in sleeping bags that I found in the west end of the Park just past the drum circle at its westerly end.
Under the sound of the drumming was the thrumb of a generator. A small knot of young men crouched around it, powering up devices. Most of the signs of organized activity were east of the crumpled tents and random sleepers. Knots of people clustered around tables dedicated to one function or other of keeping the Park running.
Here was where I found people you might think of as “anarchists,” if only in the sartorial sense. People who have some experience at self-organization. Otherwise the crowd was mostly dressed like any other crowd of college or post college age young people in New York City, although here and there you would find older people as well.
A young woman explained what was “problematic” about the occupation to two friends, and allowed me to listen in to their conversation for a while. There were a lot of small groups talking amongst themselves A man in a business suit raised a red and black flag, while talking to another man in a track suit and hoodie.
A woman smiled at a man sitting on one of the stone benches. She parted her thighs and planted herself on his lap. He kissed her; she kissed him back. Her hands were in his hair. I thought of that line in Raoul Vaneigem about those who go on and on about class struggle without speaking of love. They speak with a corpse in their mouth, he says...
Just off the subway, and heading down Church Street, I caught a glimpse of a march going North, up the street parallel to the east. I saw a mass of closely ranked bodies and banners and heard some vigorous chants. I wasn't sure where they'd be going, as Wall street is to the south. I decided to keep going down Church to Zuccotti Park and maybe catch up with that group later.
I could hear the Park before I saw it. At the western end, about a hundred people were chanting, singing, dancing, banging on drums. I hung out with the for a while. This crowd was young, fun, and a bit crusty. The financial district is usually so dead after working hours. Even the idea of a party at night here is something.
It was hard to work my way into the Park. Piles of stuff were arranged around the planting beds. Mostly disassembled tents. The police have been pretty clear that they will not tolerate “structures” without a permit, and apparently a tent is a “structure.”
A young man lay flat on his back in a sleeping bag. I narrowly missed kicking him in the head on my way by. He looked exhausted, as did a few others in sleeping bags that I found in the west end of the Park just past the drum circle at its westerly end.
Under the sound of the drumming was the thrumb of a generator. A small knot of young men crouched around it, powering up devices. Most of the signs of organized activity were east of the crumpled tents and random sleepers. Knots of people clustered around tables dedicated to one function or other of keeping the Park running.
Here was where I found people you might think of as “anarchists,” if only in the sartorial sense. People who have some experience at self-organization. Otherwise the crowd was mostly dressed like any other crowd of college or post college age young people in New York City, although here and there you would find older people as well.
A young woman explained what was “problematic” about the occupation to two friends, and allowed me to listen in to their conversation for a while. There were a lot of small groups talking amongst themselves A man in a business suit raised a red and black flag, while talking to another man in a track suit and hoodie.
A woman smiled at a man sitting on one of the stone benches. She parted her thighs and planted herself on his lap. He kissed her; she kissed him back. Her hands were in his hair. I thought of that line in Raoul Vaneigem about those who go on and on about class struggle without speaking of love. They speak with a corpse in their mouth, he says...
Continue reading
Beyond Methadone: Improving the Health of Patients in Opioid Treatment Programs
New York has increasingly recognized that drug use is more effectively addressed through health and rights-based approaches, rather than through the criminal justice system. One important example is Opioid Treatment Programs (OTPs), which offer methadone and buprenorphine to people who are dependent on heroin and other opioids (e.g. painkillers).
But methadone treatment programs are not perfect, and we have found they miss a lot of opportunities to address unmet health needs among their patients.
VOCAL-NY members who are current or former methadone patients worked with the Urban Justice Center (UJC) to develop a community–led research report that would document the challenges faced by methadone patients in OTPs and develop recommendations to make these programs more patient-centered.
Our new report, Beyond Methadone – Improving Health and Empowering Patients in Opioid Treatment Programs (OTPs): Hepatitis C, Overdose Prevention, Syringe Exchange, Buprenorphine, & Other Opportunities to Make Programs Work for Patients is the result.
Our research findings cover topics as diverse as hepatitis C, overdose prevention, syringe access, alternatives to methadone (burprenorphine), treatment interruptions, patient rights and involvement, and harassment by security and police.
Highlights of findings include:
Hepatitis C: About one-quarter of patients we surveyed did not know their hepatitis C status and did not recall ever being offered a test, and more than half of those who did test positive were offered no viral testing or further care.
Overdose Prevention: One in ten patients surveyed had experienced an overodse in the past two years and one in five had been with someone else who had overdosed, but most reported that there was no education or services to prevent overdose at their program.
Syringe Access: Three in four patients surveyed said they supported allowing syringe exchange services onsite to prevent the spread of HIV and hepatitis C.
Treatment Interruptions: More than half of survey respondents had missed a methadone dose, which can trigger severe withdraw symptoms and cause someone to use illicit drugs, which were caused by limited clinic hours, Medicaid case closures, and delays with transportation assistance.
Recommendations include onsite hepatitis C testing and care coordination, naloxone distribution and education about the new “911 Good Samaritan” law to prevent overdose deaths, onsite syringe exchange, and administrative reforms to prevent treatment interruptions.Download the executive summary or the new report for Beyond Methadone – Improving Health and Empowering Patients in Opioid Treatment Programs (OTPs): Hepatitis C, Overdose Prevention, Syringe Exchange, Buprenorphine, & Other Opportunities to Make Programs Work for Patients to find our more about our findings and comprehensive recommendations.
Via
Ada Lovelace Day 2011 has begun!
Via email from Suw Charman-Anderson:
[Public domain image via Wikipedia]
Ada Lovelace Day has already begun in the island nation of Kiribati! One of the curious things about a 'day' is that, due to various dateline shenanigans, it's Ada Lovelace Day somewhere around the world for a grand 50 hours. This means that you have plenty of time to create your tribute to a woman in science, technology, engineering or maths and add it to our collection.
To take part, just follow this simple guide:
- Visit FindingAda.com and create a profile
- Create your story about your heroine, in whatever medium you prefer, and copy the URL
- Add your URL to our collection of stories here http://findingada.com/stories/
You can also browse the other stories from our archives, via our map!
If you don't have your own blog or website, please do feel free to use the comments on our blog post (below) as a place to add your tribute:
http://blog.findingada.com/blog/2011/10/06/ada-lovelace-day-2011-begins-in-kiribati/
Let the celebrations begin!
[Public domain image via Wikipedia]
Thursday, 6 October 2011
U.S. Signs International Anti-Piracy Accord
The United States applauded the deal.
“As with many of the challenges we face in today’s global economy, no government can single-handedly eliminate the problem of global counterfeiting and piracy. Signing this agreement is therefore an act of shared leadership and determination in the international fight against intellectual property theft,” said Mariam Sapiro, deputy United States trade representative.
The deal, more than three years in the making and open for signing until May 2013, exports on participating nations an intellectual-property enforcement regime resembling the one in the United States.
Rashmi Rangnath, a staff attorney with Public Knowledge in Washington, D.C., said the deal “clearly, is an attempt to foist U.S. law on other countries.”
Among other things, the accord demands governments make it unlawful to market devices that circumvent copyright, such as devices that copy encrypted DVDs without authorization. That is akin to a feature in the the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the United States, where the law has been used by Hollywood studios to block RealNetworks from marketing DVD-copying technology.
The accord, which the United States says does not require Congressional approval, also calls on participating nations to maintain extensive seizure and forfeiture laws when it comes to counterfeited goods that are trademarked or copyrighted. Most important, countries must carry out a legal system where victims of intellectual property theft may be awarded an undefined amount of monetary damages.
In the United States, for example, the Copyright Act allows for damages of up to $150,000 per infringement. A Boston jury has dinged a college student $675,000 for pilfering 30 tracks on Kazaa, while a Minnesota jury has awarded the Recording Industry Association of America $1.5 million for the purloining of 24 songs online.
A U.S.-backed footnote removed from the document more than a year ago provided for “the termination” of internet accounts for repeat online infringers. U.S. internet service providers and content providers, however, have brokered such a deal toward that goal.
Until European Union authorities began leaking the document’s text, the Obama administration was claiming the accord was a “national security” secret.
David Kravets @'Wired'
Power to the bosses is the Tories' goal
Never let a serious crisis go to waste, was the advice of Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama's former chief of staff, at the height of the 2008 financial crisis. His old boss may have struggled to embrace the wisdom, but it appears to have become a mantra for Conservatives gathered in Manchester this week.
So much for detoxification: the party that replaced its logo with a tree is now talking about watering down carbon emissions targets. Those traditional Tory bêtes noires – the unemployed and immigrants – are getting a renewed kicking in speeches. But it is in the proposed two-pronged assault on workers' rights that the Cameron Project becomes clear: to use a crisis unleashed by the banks to re-order society in the interests of the people at the top.
To begin with, George Osborne declared his intention to make it easier for bosses to sack workers – perversely, as a means of combating rising unemployment. The qualifying period for unfair dismissals will be increased from one year of employment to two; and workers who take their former employers to industrial tribunals will have to pay an initial deposit of £250, and another £1,000 if a hearing is granted. Osborne claims this will encourage companies to take workers on, but John Philpott, chief economic adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, believes it will simply "make employment less stable over the economic cycle".
Here is an attempt to scapegoat workers' rights for rising unemployment, rather than a lethal combination of government cuts and a lack of demand in the economy. Indeed, the only OECD country with a worse record on employment protection is the United States.
The second front being opened – perhaps predictably – is against the Tories' old trade union foes. Union reps in public services are given paid leave to represent workers: across the whole Civil Service, it accounts for just 0.2 per cent of staff time. But according to Francis Maude, it "has got way out of hand", so a crackdown beckons. In actual fact, union reps play a key role. A TUC report last year found that they saved billions in productivity gains and reducing working days lost to injury and illness. Their numbers have certainly increased, but largely because the last Conservative government abandoned national bargaining in the mid-1990s, leaving industrial relations issues in a tangled mess of departments and agencies.
Using the economic crisis as cover, the Tories are carrying on where Thatcherism left off: redistributing power from working people to their bosses. The last Conservative governments achieved it largely through anti-union laws, a clampdown on workers' rights, shifting the burden of tax from direct to indirect taxation, and mass unemployment. It was remarkably successful. Back in 1973, nearly two-thirds of national wealth went to workers' pay; today, it's just 53 per cent.
It is Labour's job to oppose these attacks, but its leadership remains paralysed by fear of getting slammed for being in the unions' pockets. Few politicians make the case that unions have any legitimate place in public life. They are "vested interests", not our biggest democratic movement, representing 7m nurses, supermarket checkout assistants, factory workers and others who keep the country ticking. The Tories – bankrolled by City firms and multimillionaires – can implement policies benefiting their backers without facing accusations of being their puppets.
I asked Neil Kinnock last year if the Conservatives were the class warriors of British politics. "No, because they've never had to engage in a class war," he answered. "Largely because we signed the peace treaty without realising that they hadn't." After this week, it's time to put those illusions to rest.
Owen Jones @'The Independent'
So much for detoxification: the party that replaced its logo with a tree is now talking about watering down carbon emissions targets. Those traditional Tory bêtes noires – the unemployed and immigrants – are getting a renewed kicking in speeches. But it is in the proposed two-pronged assault on workers' rights that the Cameron Project becomes clear: to use a crisis unleashed by the banks to re-order society in the interests of the people at the top.
To begin with, George Osborne declared his intention to make it easier for bosses to sack workers – perversely, as a means of combating rising unemployment. The qualifying period for unfair dismissals will be increased from one year of employment to two; and workers who take their former employers to industrial tribunals will have to pay an initial deposit of £250, and another £1,000 if a hearing is granted. Osborne claims this will encourage companies to take workers on, but John Philpott, chief economic adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, believes it will simply "make employment less stable over the economic cycle".
Here is an attempt to scapegoat workers' rights for rising unemployment, rather than a lethal combination of government cuts and a lack of demand in the economy. Indeed, the only OECD country with a worse record on employment protection is the United States.
The second front being opened – perhaps predictably – is against the Tories' old trade union foes. Union reps in public services are given paid leave to represent workers: across the whole Civil Service, it accounts for just 0.2 per cent of staff time. But according to Francis Maude, it "has got way out of hand", so a crackdown beckons. In actual fact, union reps play a key role. A TUC report last year found that they saved billions in productivity gains and reducing working days lost to injury and illness. Their numbers have certainly increased, but largely because the last Conservative government abandoned national bargaining in the mid-1990s, leaving industrial relations issues in a tangled mess of departments and agencies.
Using the economic crisis as cover, the Tories are carrying on where Thatcherism left off: redistributing power from working people to their bosses. The last Conservative governments achieved it largely through anti-union laws, a clampdown on workers' rights, shifting the burden of tax from direct to indirect taxation, and mass unemployment. It was remarkably successful. Back in 1973, nearly two-thirds of national wealth went to workers' pay; today, it's just 53 per cent.
It is Labour's job to oppose these attacks, but its leadership remains paralysed by fear of getting slammed for being in the unions' pockets. Few politicians make the case that unions have any legitimate place in public life. They are "vested interests", not our biggest democratic movement, representing 7m nurses, supermarket checkout assistants, factory workers and others who keep the country ticking. The Tories – bankrolled by City firms and multimillionaires – can implement policies benefiting their backers without facing accusations of being their puppets.
I asked Neil Kinnock last year if the Conservatives were the class warriors of British politics. "No, because they've never had to engage in a class war," he answered. "Largely because we signed the peace treaty without realising that they hadn't." After this week, it's time to put those illusions to rest.
Owen Jones @'The Independent'
Rocking Kabul: Afghanistan stages secretive rock event
The event finished in the Central Sound Festival at Bagh-e Babor Gardens
It was arranged in secret, dates and venues closely guarded until the day.
But this basement gig, held underneath a veterinary clinic, isn't in London or New York but in the Afghan capital, Kabul.The event was part of the city's first rock festival since the fall of the Taliban and it went ahead despite threats to some of the bands.
"Four or five years ago all this could only have been a dream," says lead vocalist of District Unknown, Kassim.
"You wouldn't even be able to dream it up actually. Having a rock festival, people gathering, girls and boys together and listening to this music and headbanging. But this week it's happening."
District Unknown are an Afghan heavy metal band and like their idols Slipknot, they usually wear masks. But they wear them to protect their identity, having been threatened by the Taliban not to play music.
"Some so-called very religious people like to spread the fear of the Taliban. I've been threatened two times," says the band's 23-year-old drummer, Pedrum.
"They come to you and say stop it or we'll force you to stop. I told them that I had stopped, so we all started using masks. I hate hiding myself, I'm sick of it."
The secret gig is packed and sweaty and there's a very enthusiastic mosh pit. It could almost pass as a rock night at a student union bar in the UK.
The boys wear low-slung jeans with Pink Floyd and Red Hot Chili Peppers T-shirts, the few girls in attendance wear long-sleeved tops, but don't cover their hair like most Afghan women.
'Not for girls' Eighteen-year-old Nargis and 25-year-old Farida are students in Kabul. They are two of just four girls at the gig.
"I like to come to such places because you don't find this sort of thing in Afghanistan," says Farida.
Like everyone at the gig, they are taking a big risk and like everyone there they ask for their surnames not to be used.
Much of Afghan society thinks girls don't come out at night, and certainly not without their parents.
"There are not many girls who are brave enough to come to these parties," admits Nagris. "There are many Afghan men at this party who think it's wrong for a girl to come.
"But now we come and they can see it's not something very bad. It's only music, we're just chilling."
Farida says she's determined to try her best to lead a normal life: "We know anything can happen. Everyday when you walk out of your house, you know you might not come home in the evening.
"But we can't lock ourselves away and not enjoy our lives. We need to take the risks to live our lives like human beings."
Secret texts Music was banned under the Taliban and Afghan society remains a deeply conservative one.
Bands came from all over Central Asia, including Iran and Tajikistan Whilst traditional Afghan music and even Bollywood songs can be heard on the streets of the capital, rock music is generally seen as an unwanted western influence.
That disapproval meant fans had to register on a secret database to let them receive text messages of where and when the performances were taking place.
Almost 1,000 people attended the four-day event, with bands taking part from all over central Asia, including Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Iran.
It's 10 years this week since British and American forces began bombing Kabul to get rid of the Taliban after the 9/11 attacks.
International troops have been based in the country ever since, but both Britain and America want all combat troops out of Afghanistan by 2015.
Pedrum from District Unknown has mixed emotions about the deadline: "I think if the international forces leave this country just as it's moved forward everything will be smashed up again.
"We're lucky they are here but we need to find our own path. It's not right to try to make Afghanistan a western country. It's never going to happen.
"But no-one forced us to play rock music tonight, no-one forced us to growl and shout. No-one forced those guys to headbang to us, but they did."
Fugn semantics...
wikileaks WikiLeaks
We have not released Steve Jobs medical records. Do try reading before writing.
@wikileaks You released them in 2009, correct? And just felt we needed to read them again today?
We have not released Steve Jobs medical records. Do try reading before writing.
domknight Dominic Knight
exilestreet Mona Street
@wikileaks do try thinking before tweeting
jamesrbuk James Ball
Fairly dubious strategy from@wikileaks too: having alienated half the world's media, now alienates fans of 1. Apple and 2. Privacy.
Fairly dubious strategy from
rj_gallagher Ryan Gallagher
@jamesrbuk Got to agree. Aside from being a breach of Article 8 (is.gd/PO4DPc) it's just bad taste.
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