(Thanx Tom!)
Wednesday, 14 March 2012
Olympics 2012 security: welcome to lockdown London
Around 13,500 troops will be deployed at the London 2012 Olympics, more than are currently at war in Afghanistan. Photograph: Locog/EPA
As a metaphor for the London Olympics, it could hardly be more stark. The much-derided "Wenlock" Olympic mascot is now available in London Olympic stores dressed as a Metropolitan police officer. For £10.25 you, too, can own the ultimate symbol of the Games: a member of by far the biggest and most expensive security operation in recent British history packaged as tourist commodity. Eerily, his single panoptic-style eye, peering out from beneath the police helmet, is reminiscent of the all-seeing eye of God so commonly depicted at the top of Enlightenment paintings. In these, God's eye maintained a custodial and omniscient surveillance on His unruly subjects far below on terra firma.The imminent Olympics will take place in a city still recovering from riots that the Guardian-LSE Reading the Riots project showed were partly fuelled by resentment at their lavish cost. Last week, the UK spending watchdog warned that the overall costs of the Games were set to be at least £11bn – £2 bn over even recently inflated budgets. When major infrastructure projects such as Crossrail, speeded up for the Games, are factored in, the figure may be as high as £24bn, according to Sky News. The estimated cost put forward only seven years ago when the Games were won was £2.37 bn.
With the required numbers of security staff more than doubling in the last year, estimates of the Games' immediate security costs have doubled from £282m to £553m. Even these figures are likely to end up as dramatic underestimates: the final security budget of the 2004 Athens Olympics were around £1bn.
All this in a city convulsed by massive welfare, housing benefit and legal aid cuts, spiralling unemployment and rising social protests. It is darkly ironic, indeed, that large swaths of London and the UK are being thrown into ever deeper insecurity while being asked to pay for a massive security operation, of unprecedented scale, largely to protect wealthy and powerful people and corporations.
Critics of the Olympics have not been slow to point out the dark ironies surrounding the police Wenlock figure. "Water cannon and steel cordon sold separately," mocks Dan Hancox on the influential Games Monitor website. "Baton rounds may be unsuitable for small children."
In addition to the concentration of sporting talent and global media, the London Olympics will host the biggest mobilisation of military and security forces seen in the UK since the second world war. More troops – around 13,500 – will be deployed than are currently at war in Afghanistan. The growing security force is being estimated at anything between 24,000 and 49,000 in total. Such is the secrecy that no one seems to know for sure.
During the Games an aircraft carrier will dock on the Thames. Surface-to-air missile systems will scan the skies. Unmanned drones, thankfully without lethal missiles, will loiter above the gleaming stadiums and opening and closing ceremonies. RAF Typhoon Eurofighters will fly from RAF Northolt. A thousand armed US diplomatic and FBI agents and 55 dog teams will patrol an Olympic zone partitioned off from the wider city by an 11-mile, £80m, 5,000-volt electric fence.
Beyond these security spectaculars, more stealthy changes are underway. New, punitive and potentially invasive laws such as the London Olympic Games Act 2006 are in force. These legitimise the use of force, potentially by private security companies, to proscribe Occupy-style protests. They also allow Olympic security personnel to deal forcibly with the display of any commercial material that is deemed to challenge the complete management of London as a "clean city" to be branded for the global TV audience wholly by prime corporate sponsors (including McDonald's, Visa and Dow Chemical).
London is also being wired up with a new range of scanners, biometric ID cards, number-plate and facial-recognition CCTV systems, disease tracking systems, new police control centres and checkpoints. These will intensify the sense of lockdown in a city which is already a byword across the world for remarkably intensive surveillance...
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Stephen Graham @'The Guardian'
Controlling Interests
It would be hard to imagine a more unlikely historical moment than this one for birth control to become a matter of outraged political controversy. For starters, there is the statistic that ninety-nine per cent of all American women who have had sex have used contraception at some point in their lives . . . When birth control is uncoupled from the religious-freedom argument - and when conservatives start talking in ugly ad-hominem language, like Limbaugh’s, or clueless anachronistic language, like Santorum’s - women, in particular, do not respond well...
MORE @'The New Yorker'
MORE @'The New Yorker'
Tuesday, 13 March 2012
An Afghan Comes Home to a Massacre
Abdul Samad, who had 11 relatives killed in a massacre, expressed his outrage to President Hamid Karzai
Einstürzende Neubauten - Halber Mensch (1986)
1986 film by Sogo Ishii which documents Einstürzende Neubauten's trip to Japan in 1985.
Armenia
Sehnsucht
Letztes Biest
Abfackeln!
Zerstörte Zelle
Halber Mensch
Z.N.S.
Yü-Gung (Fütter Mein Ego)
Die Zeichnungen Des Patienten O.T.
Der Tod Ist Ein Dandy
Das Schaben
Sorry...
If it was 'hip' it wouldn't be up 'for lease' now would it...
Twat!
(Photo: TimN - Clifton Hill)
Tricky - Live Session @ West 54th New York, New York (01/03/98)
01. Christiansands
02. Ghetto Youth / Something About You (ft. Cath Coffey)
03. Black Steel
04. Tear Out My Eye
(Thanx Chris!)
Fuck SXSW
Austin itself is filled with a shit-load of pseudo-liberal hipsters who seem to think that voting for a Democrat excuses their soulless, elitist, narcissistic attitudes. Half the town looks like a sterile, lifeless movie set, and the idea that Austin is some creative artistic paradise in a sea of Texas conservatism? Well, that's a fucking joke...
The barbeque is quite good, however.
Robert Wyatt: Dondestan (Revisited) Interview
This is a wonderful mini-documentary featuring an interview with the English musician and songwriter Robert Wyatt, in which he discusses his album "Dondestan" and his decision to release a revised version of the project as "Dondestan (Revisited)." The brief film was/is included as an extra feature of the CD release of "Dondestan (Revisited)" in the late 1990s.
For fans of Robert Wyatt who are not acquainted with this album, this document serves as a charming and informative introduction to "Dondestan"'s aesthetic. Through its use of the album's music, the imagery of Alfreda Benge's photographs and paintings, and Wyatt's insightful and unpretentious commentary, the film evokes "Dondestan"'s spare, meditative and (deceptively) tranquil moods and atmospheres.
Those who are not acquainted with Robert Wyatt's music and songwriting, or have yet to explore his solo work, might find this film to be a helpful introduction to Wyatt as an artist—that is, as opposed to Wyatt as a biographical or sociological subject, to the latter two of which there is no shortage of introductions.
It offers insights into Wyatt's approach to songwriting, chord progressions, musical notation (specifically, his heterodox approach to it), record production (which he describes as "low-tech"), lyric-writing, collaboration, technology, musicianship, instrumental virtuosity (or lack there-of), composing as a process of "retrieval" and "simplification," album-sequencing, and what Wyatt calls "find[ing one's] own voice."
Land of the Black Flag
Under the moniker Ansar al-Sharia, or Partisans of Islamic Law, al Qaeda handily seized Jaar in March 2011. They quickly renamed the peaceful hamlet Waqar -- it means "respect" or "majesty," according to one of its new inhabitants -- and instituted a strict Islamic government.
The conquest of the town -- which its new rulers insisted on calling Waqar throughout my visit -- was just the latest conquest in a series of gains for Ansar al-Sharia. The group has exploited the turmoil in Yemen over the past year to seize control of much of the southern Yemen's Abyan province.
"It's like what happened with the Taliban in Afghanistan," the guard said.
Indeed, the fate of south Yemen has only reaffirmed Washington's long-held suspicion that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) -- born of a merger in 2009 between Saudi and Yemeni branches of al Qaeda -- was looking to establish a new center of gravity there. In his first congressional testimony as CIA director, David Petraeus said AQAP had "emerged as the most dangerous regional node in the global jihad." His statement came on the heels of leaked reports that a CIA drone program was preparing new kill lists targeting al Qaeda fighters in south Yemen.
Yemen's fragile new government is now caught between a resurgent al Qaeda and American counterterror operations. On the eve of my journey to Jaar, Yemen's newly minted president, Abd al-Rab Mansur al-Hadi, launched a bold military offensive aimed at retaking the town of Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan, and commencing the hellish trudge toward establishing government control over the seemingly ungovernable region. The attack, however, was a fiasco: Some 185 Yemeni soldiers were killed in the fighting and 73 were captured -- becoming bargaining chips for the release of imprisoned al Qaeda comrades.
According to my al Qaeda hosts, I was the first non-Yemeni journalist to enter their province. I found them to be as welcoming as many other Yemenis I had met in the country. Was it because I was a reporter and they sought to project a positive image? Or did they genuinely believe that Americans could coexist with jihadists?
Above: A framed photo of Osama bin Laden hangs below a sign advertising Jaar's gas station. Rows of five-gallon metal gas cans sit unattended in front of the gas clerk's chair. This was proof of Jaar's safety, according to one Ansar al-Sharia member. "We don't even need to guard the gasoline. It's safe from thieves," he said...
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Pissed Pat | S4U 014 Live Sessions Renegade Radio
Tracklist:
Benjamin Zephania – Get High
Linton Kwesi Johnson – Song Of Blood
Earl Bengiman – Health & Sorrow
Cornell Campbell – My Country
Desi Roots – Uptown Rebel
Goldmaster Sounds – Back from the Dead
Goldmaster Sounds – Spycatcher
Skatalites – Freedom Sounds
Errol Dunkley & I Roy – Created By The Father
Johnny Clarke – Guide Us Jah
Barrington Spence – I Wonder Why Jah
Junior Delgado & Jah Bug – Warrior
Israel Vibration – Licks & Kicks
Rod Taylor – If Jah Should Come Now
Glen Brown & Ranking Joe – Destiny
Max Romeo – Me Can’t Done
Inner Circle & The Fatman Riddim Section – Addis Ababa Rock
Willi Williams – Messenger Man
Burning Spear – Door Peeper (Original Single Mix)
Dubarama – fast fourward into dub
Dub Syndicate – Stoned Immaculate
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Monday, 12 March 2012
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