Peaches - Forever Dark Takeover
3 minutes ago
Monday, 10 October 2011
RIP Peter Przygodda (1941 - 2011)
Peter Przygodda, the renowned editor who worked with Wim Wenders, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, Volker Schlöndorff, Hans W Geissendörfer, Reinhard Hauff, Klaus Lemke, Peter Handke and Romuald Karmakar, has died at the age of 70. He was, as Ekkehard Knörer writes in die taz, the most important editor — a term he preferred over another commonly used in Germany, "Cutter" — of the New German Cinema of the 70s and early 80s.
Though he'd originally intended to become an architect, Przygodda founded a small theater with Rolf Zacher and shot his first short film in 1969, Der Besuch auf dem Lande (The Visit to the Country), with Zacher taking on the lead role. Later that same year, he began working with Wenders on Summer in the City, striking up a friendship and professional partnership that would see them all the way through Palermo Shooting in 2008. Przygodda won the German Film Prize (Gold) for his work on Wenders's The Wrong Movement (1975) and The American Friend (1977). Having edited nearly 100 films over four decades, he became, as Oliver Baumgarten puts it in Schnitt, a master of the "invisible" cut.
Przygodda also worked for many years with Irmin Schmidt of the legendary Krautrock group Can and, in 1971/72, shot the concert film with the straightforward title, Can.Viewing (7'16"). The Cine-Fils interview with English subtitles.
David Hudson @'Notebook'
gcluley Graham Cluley
There are NO free iPads / iPhones in memory of Steve Jobs bit.ly/n0INb9 Scams spreading quickly on Facebook
Cabaret Voltaire: Johnny YesNo revisited
The film’s broodingly psychotic, morally compromised atmosphere is beautifully echoed and enhanced by its soundtrack, written and performed by Cabaret Voltaire. Care used portions of their The Voice of America LP in his rough-cut, before meeting Stephen Mallinder at an advance screening of Apocalypse Now and inviting the Cabs to create an original score. Impressed by Care’s imagery, Mallinder and Richard H. Kirk set about doing just that, and the results count among the most thrilling and prescient work of their career, bridging the paranoid bricolage of their early records and the increasingly minimalist, dancefloor-conscious rhythms they would come to favour in their next discrete stage of evolution.
But Cabaret Voltaire’s involvement in Johnny YesNo extended beyond their role as soundtrackers: they released the film on their own VHS label, Double Vision, a short-lived but seminal hub of guerilla film-making and mixed media mischief. While the OST album has remained available over the years, the film has never been re-released, or made it onto DVD. Until now.
Richard H. Kirk remixed the film’s soundtrack for a putative Mute reissue, and contacted Peter Care to ask if he’d like to create some new visual material to accompany it. Care, now based in Los Angeles and a successful director whose credits include videos for the likes of REM and Bruce Springsteen as well as numerous high-profile ad campaigns, decided that he would create an all-new version of Johnny YesNo – this time set in the Californian underworld.
You can judge for yourself whether the new Johnny YesNo matches the squalid power of the original when Mute release the Johnny YesNo Redux box set on November 14, a package which includes both films plus Kirk’s sensitively but assertively remixed score, and much bonus material besides. FACT spoke briefly on the phone to both Kirk and Care to find out more about Johnny YesNo and the conditions that gave to rise it, and to discuss their decision to re-make it...
Occupy Wall Street: An Early Assessment
I stumbled on the initial Occupy Wall Street protests by accident back on its first day of September 17th walking through the financial district in lower Manhattan. While the group seemed quite inchoate and far smaller than the 20,000 thousand or so initially advertised, I’d been intrigued by the solidarity they had expressed with protest movements in Spain or even revolutionary episodes such as the pivotal events in Cairo’s Tahrir Square during the early days of the Arab Awakening. I overheard that day some bemused onlookers who may have been low-level financial sector workers mockingly saying--‘so, this is it?’—but could not help suspecting I would be hearing more about Occupy Wall Street in coming weeks. Indeed, I’d long suspected the financial crisis, policy foibles, chronic unemployment, and general corruption of our politics would sooner or later fuel a measure of social unrest in this country as it has elsewhere. We are not immune to a deadening of hope fused with deep-seated suspicion of having been swindled via policy decisions resulting from a politics that is largely broken and denies a sense of genuine progress and possibility. Almost immediately after espying this nascent protest movement I left for a three week business trip to Asia before returning to New York only yesterday, where incidentally, I was asked on several occasions overseas about the growing movement.
From afar in East Asia, I noticed Occupy Wall Street has done several things right, some a result of sheer luck (read: police over-reactions), others manifesting a measure of tactical skill. A couple of the initial pepper spray incidents went viral on YouTube, one showing very young women screaming hysterically while penned—or is the term for this ‘kettled’?—by bright orange police mesh. Here the ‘luck’ of brute force helped create outsize publicity by a media that had mostly ignored the going-ons up to that point. After all, it cannot help looking like a failure of our society when generally hapless young women are being sprayed in or near their faces by male police officers twice their age simply about behavior surrounding access to public places. These could be our own daughters, after all, and it offends basic sensibility (see the footage here). Another key moment in the growing tide of the movement was the incident of mass arrests in and around the Brooklyn Bridge (again, footage available here for those who are curious), partly a result of the confusion among some of the protesters (to be sure, perhaps a convenient confusion) about whether or not they had been granted access to the vehicular lanes rather than merely the pedestrian pathway on the bridge. Regardless of the merits, mass arrests on the order of some 700 or so individuals on an iconic New York landmark will engender healthy international headlines, boosting the nascent protest movement’s profile very significantly, with this event likely having constituted the break-out...
From afar in East Asia, I noticed Occupy Wall Street has done several things right, some a result of sheer luck (read: police over-reactions), others manifesting a measure of tactical skill. A couple of the initial pepper spray incidents went viral on YouTube, one showing very young women screaming hysterically while penned—or is the term for this ‘kettled’?—by bright orange police mesh. Here the ‘luck’ of brute force helped create outsize publicity by a media that had mostly ignored the going-ons up to that point. After all, it cannot help looking like a failure of our society when generally hapless young women are being sprayed in or near their faces by male police officers twice their age simply about behavior surrounding access to public places. These could be our own daughters, after all, and it offends basic sensibility (see the footage here). Another key moment in the growing tide of the movement was the incident of mass arrests in and around the Brooklyn Bridge (again, footage available here for those who are curious), partly a result of the confusion among some of the protesters (to be sure, perhaps a convenient confusion) about whether or not they had been granted access to the vehicular lanes rather than merely the pedestrian pathway on the bridge. Regardless of the merits, mass arrests on the order of some 700 or so individuals on an iconic New York landmark will engender healthy international headlines, boosting the nascent protest movement’s profile very significantly, with this event likely having constituted the break-out...
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Gregory Djerejian @'The Belgravia Dispatch'
Herman Cain: Yes, Wall St. Protesters Just Jealous
Some Cops Furious NYPD Officer Flashed Peace Sign In Photo With Occupy Wall Street Protester
The above picture, featured on the Facebook profile of someone named "Photon Frequency", is presented as an example of how police and protesters really can get along: "Much of the NYPD are really on our side. We need to stay away from negative media influence and stay supportive and respectful of their difficult job. Many of the officers I spoke to are supportive of this movement and gratefully acknowledged the peaceful efforts of the protesters." However, don't tell that to any of the cops over at Thee Rant police forum—they're pretty darn annoyed at the cop for posing with these "miscreants."
Thee Rant is the internet forum for retired and current members of the NYPD, and they seem to heartily disapprove of officers engaging with protesters in any manner other than from an authoritarian position. User 10 08 wrote, "there are only 2 types of reactions you give these people. #1 - NOTHING #2 - ARREST." BNDB agrees in a long message:
Exactly right! When we do anything else other than the above, we undermine the mission we have as police officers to be proffesional and maintain a STRONG AUTHORITATIVE presence... Act professional at all times!Not everyone is ready to damn the office-in-question: some hope-against-hope that maybe it's all a big misunderstanding! User bxnarcorgr asks, "Could it be he was bored and in a moment of stupidity, he flashed the peace sign more out of sarcasm than out of sympathy for the cause?" Murray Da COP said, "Maybe the cop is putting in his order for coffee or something. Yea TWO sugars please!"
Dont show any signs of weakness, by doing that, we raise the threat level for all other officers!
Even if we agree with these trust-fund punks, as Police Officers, it is not our job to appease and empathise with them, it is our job to make sure we, and all other officers GO HOME SAFELY!
These punks we stand with, laugh with now, ten minutes later will be throwing their piss and shyte at us, calling us pigs and climbing the barriers to try to fight us...DON'T FORGET THAT!
These trust fund bytches are NOT OUR FRIENDS! They want to see us hurt, either physically or on the job. They want to see us indicted for doing our job. They want to see us lose our jobs, our means for support to our families, they want to see our lives ruined...THEY ARE NOT OUR FRIENDS!
If you really feel that strongly about them, that you empathize with them, then maybe you should think about resigning your position as a New York City Police Officer.
If this is their reaction to a little peace sign, we can't wait to see what they think about the protester who allegedly was caught on camera defecating on a cop car.
Ben Yakas @'gothamist'
'Fox News lies!'
Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera attempted to report from the Occupy Wall Street protests in Lower Manhattan today but was forced to abort the broadcast after a throng of demonstrators led a rally of anti-Fox jeers.
Dale Carnegie's self-help bible gets a new life for the digital age
The grandfather of all self-help books, which spawned an industry devoted to self-improvement, is being updated for the age of Facebook and Twitter.
Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People was first published in 1936. Its updated version provides an unlikely transplant of 1930s precepts to the modern age of social media and the internet.
Three-quarters of a century after the original, How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age has hit the shelves. Out goes much of the old advice on how to impress and befriend people with face-to-face interaction or letters. Instead there is advice on how bloggers should interact with their readers and a caution about how celebrities mishandle their public wrongdoings.
The original book was based on a series of lectures given by Carnegie, who had risen from an impoverished childhood in Missouri to become one of the most famous public speakers in the world.
Carnegie's appeal was his relentlessly positive attitude and belief that cheerfully showing respect and interest in other people would reap dividends. His book was a sensation and has remained on the bestseller lists, notching up an estimated 15m sales worldwide. But how does it cope with being translated into the digital world?
Badly, according to some reviewers. The New York Times was scathing. "Were Carnegie alive to read this grievous book, he would clutch his chest … smile wanly for a few minutes (he didn't like to make others feel bad), then keel over into his cornflakes," wrote Dwight Garner. He slammed the use of hard-to-penetrate corporate language, adding: "So let me conclude with the good news. His original book, unmolested, can still be found on bookstore shelves."
That sentiment chimes with many social media and PR experts. Though the world that Carnegie wrote for has changed beyond all recognition, his essential message remains relevant. "It works because he is talking about basic human characteristics: don't lie, be forthright and pleasant. Facebook and Twitter have speeded up communication but they have not completely changed it," said Ed Zitron, of Manhattan-based TriplePoint PR, which specialises in digital media.
Carnegie taught very simple rules of interaction, such as try to use someone's name when talking to them or first meeting them. Listen to what they have to say and let other people do a lot of the talking when discussing your ideas. Be enthusiastic and never let an opportunity to make a new friend pass by as you never know when you might need them.
The book was aimed originally at the emerging middle classes of the 1930s and 1940s. But many experts say it is as relevant today, even though social networking rather than a handshake might be the more common way to make new contacts.
"It is all alive and well. It is still with us today," said Marc Hoag, chief executive of Venturocket, a job search website.
He has little time for those who use the informal style of Facebook and Twitter for their communications. It might be OK to use abbreviations and poor spellings in messages between friends, but it is still not acceptable in formal communication.
"Sometimes when I get job applications it blows my mind. There are simple punctuation errors. There is still a place to be prim and proper," Hoag said.
But there are areas where, clearly, the rules have changed. Carnegie placed a huge stress on verbal interaction and smiling. But, said Zitron: "People don't follow people on Twitter because they are nice. They follow people because they have an authority on something."
Paul Harris @'The Guardian'
Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan: the story behind the photograph that shamed America
In the fall of 1957, Elizabeth was among the nine black students who had enlisted, then been selected, to enter Little Rock Central High School.
Central was the first high school in a major southern city set to be desegregated since the United States Supreme Court had ruled three years earlier in Brown vs Board of Education that separate and ostensibly equal education was unconstitutional. Inspired both by Thurgood Marshall, who had argued the case of plaintiff Oliver L Brown, and Clarence Darrow, Elizabeth wanted to become a lawyer, and she thought Central would help her realise that dream.
On the television as Elizabeth ate her breakfast, a newsman described large crowds gathering around Central. It was all her mother, Birdie, needed to hear. “Turn that thing off!” she shouted. Should anyone say something nasty at her, she counselled Elizabeth, pretend not to hear them. Or better yet, be nice, and put them to shame.
Lots of white people lined Park Street as Elizabeth headed towards the school. As she passed the Mobil station and came nearer, she could see the white students filtering unimpeded past the soldiers. To her, it was a sign that everything was all right. But as she herself approached, three Guardsmen, two with rifles, held out their arms, directing her to her left, to the far side of Park.
A crowd had started to form behind Elizabeth, and her knees began to shake. She continued down Park. For an instant, she faced the school: it just looked so big! She steadied herself, then walked up to another soldier. He didn’t move.
When she tried to squeeze past him, he raised his carbine. Other soldiers moved over to assist him. When she tried to get in around them, they moved to block her way. They glared at her.
Now, as Elizabeth continued walking south down Park, more and more of the people lining the street fell in behind her. Some were Central students, others adults. They started shouting at her. The primitive television cameras, for all their bulkiness, had no sound equipment. But the reporters on the scene scribbled down what they heard: “Lynch her! Lynch her!” “No nigger bitch is going to get in our school!” “Go home, nigger!” Looking for a friendly face, Elizabeth turned to an old white woman. The woman spat on her...
A crowd had started to form behind Elizabeth, and her knees began to shake. She continued down Park. For an instant, she faced the school: it just looked so big! She steadied herself, then walked up to another soldier. He didn’t move.
When she tried to squeeze past him, he raised his carbine. Other soldiers moved over to assist him. When she tried to get in around them, they moved to block her way. They glared at her.
Now, as Elizabeth continued walking south down Park, more and more of the people lining the street fell in behind her. Some were Central students, others adults. They started shouting at her. The primitive television cameras, for all their bulkiness, had no sound equipment. But the reporters on the scene scribbled down what they heard: “Lynch her! Lynch her!” “No nigger bitch is going to get in our school!” “Go home, nigger!” Looking for a friendly face, Elizabeth turned to an old white woman. The woman spat on her...
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David Margolick @'The Telegraph'
U.S. Drug Policy Would Be Imposed Globally By New House Bill
"Under this bill, if a young couple plans a wedding in Amsterdam, and as part of the wedding, they plan to buy the bridal party some marijuana, they would be subject to prosecution," said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates for reforming the country's drug laws. "The strange thing is that the purchase of and smoking the marijuana while you're there wouldn't be illegal. But this law would make planning the wedding from the U.S. a federal crime."
The law could also potentially affect academics and medical professionals. For example, a U.S. doctor who works with overseas doctors or government officials on needle exchange programs could be subject to criminal prosecution. A U.S. resident who advises someone in another country on how to grow marijuana or how to run a medical marijuana dispensary would also be in violation of the new law, even if medical marijuana is legal in the country where the recipient of the advice resides. If interpreted broadly enough, a prosecutor could possibly even charge doctors, academics and policymakers from contributing their expertise to additional experiments like the drug decriminalization project Portugal, which has successfully reduced drug crime, addiction and overdose deaths.
The Controlled Substances Act also regulates the distribution of prescription drugs, so something as simple as emailing a friend vacationing in Tijuana some suggestions on where to buy prescription medication over the counter could subject a U.S. resident to criminal prosecution. "It could even be something like advising them where to buy cold medicine overseas that they'd have to show I.D. to get here in the U.S.," Piper says...
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Radley Balko @'HuffPo'
The Psychogeography of Loose Associations
Perhaps the most prominent characteristic of psychogeography is the activity of walking. The act of walking is an urban affair, and in cities that are increasingly hostile to pedestrians, walking tends to become a subversive act.
The psychogeographer is a “non-scientific researcher” who encounters the urban landscape through aimless drifting, experiencing the effects of geographical settings ignored by city maps, and often documenting these processes using film, photography, script writing, or tape. In this way, the wanderer becomes alert to the metaphors, visual rhymes, coincidences, analogies, and changing moods of the street.
The Cairo Psychogeographical Society was formed in 1989. It is an independent collective of ever changing members. Unlike official scientific or cultural entities, whether governmental or non-governmental, the Cairo Psychogeographical Society is not networked, nor does it communicate with other research centers dealing with architecture, urban planning, or geography at large. Neither is it an organization that receives financial support from development funds, commercial companies, or individuals.
The Society also does not announce its existence publicly by any means.
This extreme isolation is partly due to the criticisms the Society received regularly in conferences as well as in the press.
Critics constantly attack the Society for “a lack of validity due to its inability to produce any scientific discussion or actual discoveries.”
A more severe criticism states that “the so called ‘society’ is a collective of rich, bored, leisurely hobbyists who crave the construction of their own myths — myths that in the end only satisfy the members’ own vanity and ambitions for infamy...”
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How NOT to redact a PDF - Military radar secrets spilled
As Naked Security has explained before, if you're an organisation that is making public an internal document, you best make sure that you have deleted or blacked out any personal, confidential or actionable information.
The act of obscuring the sensitive information is known as "redaction", and it needs to be done properly if you want to keep something secret.
For instance, simply putting black text on a black background does not stop people from cutting-and-pasting the contents.
When a 22 page PDF document called "Air Defence And Air Traffic Systems Radar Transportation Study – Part 2" was published on a parliamentary website, it was hoped that its more sensitive contents would be properly redacted.But, as the Daily Star reports, although there were sections "blacked out", the contents could easily be recovered simply by cutting-and-pasting.
Last time the MOD made this mistake it was related to nuclear submarine secrets, one hopes that they have learnt their lesson by now and provided an easy-to-understand guide for staff on how to properly redact documents.
If you want to learn how to properly redact Adobe PDF files, here's a good guide describing how to do it with Acrobat X Pro.
Remember that simply marking text will not actually remove it from your sensitive PDFs. You also have to apply redactions!
Graham Cluley @'naked security'
Mental Health
World Mental Health Day: 10 October 2011
World Mental Health Day raises public awareness about mental health issues. This year the theme is "Investing in mental health". Financial and human resources allocated for mental health are inadequate especially in low resource countries. The majority of low- and middle-income countries spend less than 2% of their health budget on mental health.- Read more about World Mental Health Day
- Secretary-General's message
pdf, 19kb - Arabic
pdf, 59kb - Chinese
pdf, 89kb - French
pdf, 21kb - Russian
pdf, 127kb - Spanish
pdf, 15kb
dangerroom Danger Room
Could the Predator drone virus be the military's own doing? bit.ly/oazhST // Not the first person I've heard float this theory.
Sunday, 9 October 2011
Rep. Peter King (R-NY): Do Not Allow Any Legitimacy For Wall Street Protests, Or It Will Be Like 1960s Again
Speaking with right-wing radio show host Laura Ingraham on Friday, Rep. Peter King (R-NY), the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, blasted the media for providing fair coverage to the Occupy Wall Street protests. “They have no sense of purpose other than a basically anti-American tone,” he said. King also explained that he is “old enough to remember what happened in the 1960s when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy.” He added, “We can’t allow that to happen.”
King is right that the 99 Percent Movement, with “occupation” actions from Sacramento to New York City and beyond, mirrors the broad-based protest movements of the 1960s. Back then, millions of American engaged in street protests which eventually led to the end of legal racial segregation, the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, as well as other successful programs to reduce the level of poverty and human suffering in America. The same protest movement King fears also led to the development of the Environmental Protection Agency, the birth of the mainstream feminist and gay rights movement, and the end of the wars in Indochina.
It might seem natural that King is an opponent of the 99 Percent Movement. He has spent much of his career in Congress placing the corporate interest over the public interest. For instance, King made a high-stakes legislative move to block health benefits for the rescue workers who developed cancer as a result of their heroic work during after the 9/11 terror attacks. He blocked the money because it was paid for by ending certain tax loopholes for foreign corporations. Indeed, like many of his GOP colleagues, King placed the foreign wealthy one percent over the people who risked their lives rescuing people at the World Trade Center.
Lee Fang @'ThinkProgress'
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