Haiti earthquake feared to have killed hundreds

Pictures from Port-au-Prince show some of the damage caused to the capital

A 7.0-magnitude quake which hit south of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince is feared to have killed hundreds of people across the Caribbean country.

In the space of a minute, Haiti's worst quake in two centuries wrecked the HQ of the UN mission, Haiti's national palace and numerous other buildings.
A "large number" of UN personnel were reported missing by the organisation.
Describing it as a "catastrophe", Haiti's envoy to the US said the cost of the damage could run into billions.

The quake, which struck about 15km (10 miles) south-west of Port-au-Prince, was quickly followed by two strong aftershocks of 5.9 and 5.5 magnitude.
The tremor hit at 1653 (2153 GMT), the US Geological Survey said. Phone lines to the country failed shortly afterwards.
Aid workers and reporters at the scene estimated the number of dead to be in the hundreds or even thousands.
Vehicles ferrying the injured to hospital were hampered by rubble blocking the capital's streets.

I think hundreds of casualties would be a serious understatement Rachmani Domersant operations manager, Food for the Poor In pictures: Haitian earthquake

Bodies, white with dust, could be seen piled on the back of a pick-up truck.
As night fell, Rachmani Domersant, an operations manager with the Food for the Poor charity, told Reuters: "The whole city is in darkness.
"You have thousands of people sitting in the streets with nowhere to go. There are people running, crying, screaming."
Adding that he had seen no rescue vehicles in the hillside suburb of Petionville, he said: "People are trying to dig victims out with flashlights.
"I think hundreds of casualties would be a serious understatement."
As the poorest country in the western hemisphere, Haiti is likely to need international aid in order to cope with the quake's impact, the BBC's Nick Davies reports from neighbouring Jamaica.
'Three million affected'
In a statement issued in New York, the UN said that its local HQ in Haiti had "sustained serious damage along with other UN installations" and "a large number" of personnel were missing.

EYEWITNESS Carel Pedre, TV and radio presenter, Port-au-Prince I saw a lot of people crying for help, a lot of buildings collapsed, a lot of car damage, a lot of people without help, people bleeding. I saw a movie theatre, a supermarket, a cybercafe, an apartment building which collapsed. Now it's dark outside, there is no electricity, all the phone networks are down, so there's no way that people can get in touch with their family and friends. There are aftershocks every 15 to 20 minutes. They last from three to five seconds. The first shock was really strong, people were falling in the streets and buildings collapsed. I didn't see any emergency services, the people at the neighbourhood were trying to help each other. The streets are narrow and there is lot of traffic and everyone is trying to reach family and friends. Traffic now is really difficult. People don't know where to go or where to start. Eyewitness: 'Blood all over them'

UN peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said it was unclear how many people had been inside the building.
The UN's stabilisation mission plays a vital role in ensuring security in Haiti.
Raymond Joseph, Haiti's ambassador to the US, said the presidential palace, the tax office, the ministry of commerce and the foreign ministry had all been damaged, but the airport was intact.
He and Haiti's ambassador to Mexico, Robert Manuel, both said that President Rene Preval and his wife had survived the quake.
The World Bank, which said its local offices were destroyed but that most staff were accounted for, planned to send a team to help Haiti assess damage and plan a recovery, Reuters reported.
Mike Blanpied of the US Geological Survey said that, based on the location and size of the quake, about three million people would have been severely shaken by its impact.
"This quake occurred under land as opposed to off-shore, so a lot of people were directly exposed to the shaking coming off that earthquake fault, which was quite shallow," he told the BBC.
US President Barack Obama said in a statement that his "thoughts and prayers" were with the people of Haiti and America stood ready to assist them.
'Rubble and wire'
In the minutes after the quake, Henry Bahn, a visiting official from the US Department of Agriculture, said he had seen houses which had tumbled into a ravine.

HAITI COUNTRY PROFILE Half of Caribbean island of Hispaniola History of violence, instability and dictatorship Population of 10 million people Most live on less than $2 a day Democratic rule restored in 2006 Economy in ruins and unemployment is chronic UN peacekeepers deployed - foreign aid seen as vital Massive deforestation has left just 2% forest

"Everybody is just totally, totally freaked out and shaken," said Mr Bahn, who described the sky as "just grey with dust".
He said he had been walking to his hotel room when the ground began to shake.
"I just held on and bounced across the wall," he said.
"I just hear a tremendous amount of noise and shouting and screaming in the distance."
He said rocks were strewn all over the place, and the ravine was "just full of collapsed walls and rubble and barbed wire".
BBC News website readers in the Dominican Republic, which borders Haiti on the island of Hispaniola, said they had also felt the quake.
"My family is on the 8th floor of a tower in downtown Santo Domingo," wrote Max Levine.
"We felt a swaying of the building for 5-10 seconds. All the lamps were swinging. There was a 20-second pause and then another similar sway. We rushed out of the building with many others to the street."
In the immediate aftermath of the quake, a tsunami watch was put out for Haiti, Cuba and the Bahamas, but this was later lifted.

@'BBC'

Who murdered Prof. Ali-Mohammadi?

LaraABCNews

  

we seem to be two rounds into an #Iran-China cyberwar - first Baidu is attacked by the Iranian Cyberarmy, then Chinese hackers hit back 9 minutes ago from web

HAITI PHOTOGRAPHS

Further Anthrax Cases Confirmed in Scotland

(PDF)

Feb 19th here in Australia. I'm warning you...

Aid agencies helping Haiti

This is an update of an earlier report on Help for Haiti after the 7.0 Earthquake.  The organization list was updated such that new information was placed in alphabetical order.

Haiti's an impoverished nation that is asking for fiscal help in the wake of the terrible destruction from the 7.0 Earthquake, the largest ever in that region of the World. Moreover the nation's being battered with aftershocks.

Power is out everywhere and people are in the dark and need help.  The capital city of Port-Au-Prince has been catastrophically damaged.

Fortunately, legitimate online help efforts are being established. Here are some of them as of this writing:

American Red Cross (Reportedly has contributed $200,000 to Haiti relief.)

AmeriCares Help For Haiti. Goes to their International Disaster Relief Fund.

Chuck Simmins also has this blog - http://northshorejournal.org/haiti-earthquake-aid - of coverage of the Haiti Earthquake Disaster and where to donate, including any organizations that may not be listed here.

Doctors without Boarders - not a Haiti Specific page as of this writing.

HaitiArise - HaitiArise has provided education and relief for the past six years. It's a registered Canadian charity and reports that 100 percent of donated funds go directly to Haiti.

Haiti Emergency Relief Fund - by Vanguard Public Foundation in San Francisco. Established for Haiti before the Earthquake.

Mercy Corps - Mercy Corps' website is devoted to the Haiti Earthquake Disaster; they're deploying a team bound for Haiti now.

Partners In Heath - You can use the drop-down menu to specify donations to Haiti.

Yele Haiti - Wyclef Jean's Haiti initiative to assist his native Haiti.

UNICEF - UNICEF has set up a special page for donations for the children of Haiti. In an email, UNICEF's Alissa Pinck reports: "UNICEF’s country office in Haiti and the regional office located in Panama is on the ground and have already deployed emergency teams to assess the situation and determine what the additional emergency needs are for the people of Haiti."

HERE

Live feed from Haiti

Gawdhelpusall...

British director Guy Ritchie has collaborated with Universal Records to create a label to launch his pub’s house band into the mainstream.

Ritchie believes that the band, an Irish folk group who regularly play at his pub – The Punchbowl – here, have what it takes to be successful and is funding them to help give the band a boost!

Jon Stewart meets John Yoo

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Daily Show: Exclusive - John Yoo Extended Interview Pt. 1
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

All City Showcase Mixed by Om Unit

    

WARNING!!! Graphic video

The Banality of Evil

Google's statement re: China

A new approach to China

1/12/2010 03:00:00 PM

Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident--albeit a significant one--was something quite different.

First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses--including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors--have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.

Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.

Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users' computers.

We have already used information gained from this attack to make infrastructure and architectural improvements that enhance security for Google and for our users. In terms of individual users, we would advise people to deploy reputable anti-virus and anti-spyware programs on their computers, to install patches for their operating systems and to update their web browsers. Always be cautious when clicking on links appearing in instant messages and emails, or when asked to share personal information like passwords online. You can read more here about our cyber-security recommendations. People wanting to learn more about these kinds of attacks can read this U.S. government report (PDF), Nart Villeneuve's blog and this presentation on the GhostNet spying incident.

We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech. In the last two decades, China's economic reform programs and its citizens' entrepreneurial flair have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. Indeed, this great nation is at the heart of much economic progress and development in the world today.

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that "we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China."

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised

E-Mail Leak Has Google Threatening to Leave China

Google Inc. said Tuesday it might end its operations in China after it discovered that the e-mail accounts of human rights activists had been breached.

The company disclosed in a blog post that it had detected a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China." Further investigation revealed that "a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists," Google's post said.

Google did not specifically accuse the Chinese government. But the company added that it is "no longer willing to continue censoring our results" on its Chinese search engine, as the government requires. Google says the decision could force it to shut down its Chinese site and its offices in the country.

Google first agreed to censor search results in China in 2006 when it created a version of its search engine bearing China's Web suffix, ".cn." Previously, Chinese-language results had been available through the company's main Google.com site.

To obtain its Chinese license, Google agreed to omit Web content that the country's government found objectionable. At the time Google executives said they struggled with how to reconcile the censorship concessions with the company's motto of "don't be evil." By then Yahoo had come under fire for giving the Chinese government account information of a Chinese journalist who was later convicted for violating state secrecy laws.

@'NY Times'

WARNING!!! Graphic pictures

M.I.A. does NOT agree with the 'NY Times' assessment that Sri Lanka is the top destination spot this year!

Italian agent Claudio Pasqualin claims Inter Milan are preparing to make a formal transfer bid for Steven Gerrard.

The Italian giants believe Liverpool's owners could be tempted with a bid in the region of £40million for the skipper due to the current financial standing of the club.

Pasqualin - who is rumoured to be already working on a proposed summer offer - said: "Teams are already working for the market in June and there will be surprises.

"Inter are working on the Steven Gerrard prospective given Liverpool's economic difficulty."

The Liverpool skipper obviously isn't available as far as Rafa Benitez is concerned but the £40million question is, is he available as far as the owners are concerned?

@'Kop Talk'

Tehran bombing 12 January

Allegations fly over Iranian scientist's assassination

Crazy

Apparently following the seventh death, in Dundee this time. 
The anthrax/heroin story has finally reached the evening news bulletin in Scotland...

For northern friends...

How Iran Press TV reported Mohammadi's death

(?)

Superb analysis of this story

HERE

William Burroughs's Stuff photographed by Peter Ross

Like estate sales or cat burglary, Peter Ross’s photographs of William Burroughs’s possessions provide a glimpse into the material world of someone we thought we knew. In the interview below, Ross explains how the pictures (see here for the complete collection) explore the myth of the man through a selection of weird, touching, and often unexpected possessions found in Burroughs’s windowless New York City apartment, preserved since his death in 1997.
+++

How did you end up photographing William Burroughs’s stuff? 

William Burroughs lived for many years in the former locker room of an 1880s YMCA, on the Bowery in New York City. The almost windowless space was known as The Bunker. When he died in 1997, his friend and mine, John Giorno, kept the apartment intact, with many of Burroughs’s possessions sitting as they were. Part of the space is now used for Buddhist teachings, and the apartment is a wonderful mix of Buddhist wall hangings and pillows and carpets and Burroughs’ personal furniture and collections. 

Is the room still intact? 

His bedroom is as he left it, with all his stuff in place. Giorno looks after it, and occasionally houses visiting artists and friends and Buddhist teachers who come to teach in the main area of the space. 

Did these objects go back to their home after being photographed? 

I spent my day going through the room and removing items to photograph on a backdrop that was set up in the kitchen, on Burroughs’s dining table. I would then return the objects to his room. 

How did you choose what articles you wanted to photograph? 

Most of the items just jumped out at me. How could I pull a book titled Medical Implications of Karate Blows out of a stack and not photograph it? Or the typewriter with his name on it? The blow darts and board that hang on the wall in his bedroom? 

Well, how did you decide on the angle for each photograph—why the bottoms of the shoes, for example, instead of the tops? 

I challenged myself to try and find what was unique to the items. I was looking for something historical and specific to their owner, and short of that I was pushing for an off-kilter angle or placement.

Shoes are just shoes, but only one man wore the holes into the bottoms of this pair. Just think of where these shoes have been, the conversations they have witnessed. These shoes likely have met many of my heroes of New York’s 1970s and ‘80s culture. 

Was photographing each piece out of context an attempt to separate the stuff from the man? Should the pieces tell their own story? 

I think it’s interesting that I know where these items sit and what those rooms look like. I know the lighting, the stillness, and the thick concrete walls, but the viewer does not. The viewer’s imagination is put into play with each image. That might not have been the case if these pictures included their physical surroundings. 

I’m trying to look at these photos and separate the stuff from what I already know or think I know about Burroughs. But, blow darts, nunchucks, The Magical Art of Karate—it does seem appropriate for a man who shot his wife playing William Tell. Were you surprised? Did the nature of the things Burroughs had in his possession at the end of his life make sense to you? 

I never met the man, and so I have no way of knowing what these items meant to him. Many seem representative of the ‘‘myth” of the man, and seem appropriate to the public image we all have of him. But I have no idea if he was a lover of pinwheels, a collector of old quilts, or a compulsive shoe shiner. Maybe John Giorno knows. Maybe no one does. 

I have a sense that this stuff couldn’t have existed at the same time as an iPhone or even a digital camera—it seems very much from another era. Do you feel like this is just because Burroughs was old, or is there something else going on?  

Well, I bet I’ll go through half a dozen iPhones in the time it would have taken Burroughs to resole those shoes. That makes me feel greedy, wasteful, and self-indulgent. Maybe I’d be better off keeping the modern world out. Maybe we all would. Let’s all just grab our nunchucks, put on our shoes and hat and walk the streets of Manhattan. 

“Stuff” really is the perfect word to describe this collection. But what makes this “stuff” rather than belongings, or possessions, or effects? What does our stuff say about us, or Burroughs for that matter? 

“Stuff” seems appropriately random and irreverent, although I don’t really mind what we call it. I use my grandfather’s ‘stuff’ in my daily life to eat, to keep time, to store clothes. These acts keep him with me. But to you, it’s just stuff, not memories. These items certainly tell a portrait of what interested this man, although none of us can know to what extent. Maybe I chose items that just played to his public image, the one in my head? Why didn’t I shoot his couch, or bedside lamps, or dining chairs? 

If you could walk away with one item of Burroughs’s stuff, what would you take? 

The shoeshine kit. My shoes are a mess. 

How does the work compare to other projects you’ve done—your portraits or your photographs of brains, for example? Could it be said that these are portraits of the objects?

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to find the right balance between people’s inner and outer identities, their common peacefulness. And the anonymous decades-old brains are a shared portrait of all of us. But these items are very specific to one man, and a man with a public identity at that. His portrait has been made over and over, and it exists inside many heads: the man in the suit, in the city or the country, wearing a hat, serious, maybe holding a rifle, or talking to Mick Jagger. This is as close as I can ever get to that man.

I tried to find something unique in each object, regardless of its history or ownership or curation. I love the brittle paper of the magazines, the shapes of the various bullets, and the textures and colors of the quilt.

HERE  

(Via 'Mogadonia' with thanx!)

The Saints - Know Your Product

RIP MASOUD ALI MOHAMMADI

Professor MASOUD ALI MOHAMMADI

Professor of Physics

Department of Physics

University of Tehran

North Kargar Avenue

Tehran

Iran

Tel (+98-21) 88.63.30.21

Fax (+98-21) 88.00.47.81

e-mail: alimohmd@ut.ac.ir
Downloadable PDF's of his science papers
HERE

From a comment left at another blog:

"I am a theoretical physicist.
As I have explained other places, his articles are all of very theoretical/mathematical nature (quantum groups, Yang-Mills theory on curved spacetime, dark matter and such). None of these are closely related to what is needed to build a nuclear reactor, that is a job for experimental physicists and mainly engineers. It not very likely that he could do anything of importance in a nuclear project. Not to mention he could not be trusted, being a supporter of Moussavi.

It is quit(e) convenient that a foreign agency has killed a physicist unimportant for the nuclear project and a political opponent, in a time the regime really needs stuff for propaganda." 

HERE

Okkervil River team up with Roky Erikson for new album

Fourteen years after his last album of original material, psych-rock legend and onetime 13th Floor Elevators frontman Roky Erickson is readying a new record called True Love Cast Out All Evil, out April 20 via Anti-. And he got some top-shelf help to bring his songs to life: fellow Austinites Okkervil River back Erickson on the whole LP, and Okkervil frontman Will Sheff produces. The team-up isn't a surprise, since Erickson played with Okkervil River at SXSW in 2008 and 2009.

The album features songs written by Erickson throughout his life, as well as "found-sound and archival recordings culled from Erickson's home videos and recordings made in the Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane," according to a press release. (Erickson spent several years in the hospital in the early 70s, after a drug possession arrest.)

Talking about the record in a press release, Sheff said, "When we started out, I was given sixty unreleased songs to choose from. There were songs written during business setbacks including the Elevators' painful breakup, songs written by Roky while he was incarcerated at Rusk, and a great deal of songs that reminded me of the sense of optimism and romanticism that I think sustained Roky through his worst years and ultimately reunited him, a few years ago, with his son Jegar and his first wife Dana."

Erickson has been plagued by mental illness for decades-- his plight was chronicled in the excellent 2005 documentary You're Gonna Miss Me.

@'Pitchfork' 
Now that sounds interesting!

The scene of the bomb was also cleaned up very fast...

UPDATE:

Assassinated professor's name among 420 Tehran Uni profs who supported Mousavi during #iranelection http://bit.ly/8hUTyI less than a minute ago from TweetDeck
It would also appear that the killed professor was not a nuclear physicist but a theoretical particle physicist
and was also a part of the SESAME Project.

Salman Sima Sentenced to Six-Year Jail Term  #iranelection half a minute ago from TweetDeckAli Behzadian has been sentenced to 6 yrs, charged w spreading anti Gov news on Internet #iranelection half a minute ago from TweetDeck
Mohamad Reza Norbakhsh sentenced to 3 yrs, charged w operating the site Jomhoriat & spreading anti Gov news #iranelection
Hesam Tarmasi has been sentenced to 1 yr, charged with participating in illegal protests #iranelection less than a minute ago from Twubs

Preservation: Past, Present & Future (New Underground Resistance compilation)

   

Baidu hacked by 'Iranian cyber army'

China's most popular search engine, Baidu, has been targeted by the same hackers that took Twitter offline in December, according to reports.
A group claiming to be the Iranian Cyber Army redirected Baidu users to a site displaying a political message.
The site was down for at least four hours on Tuesday, Chinese media said.
Last year's attack on micro-blogging service Twitter had the same hallmarks, sending users to a page with an Iranian flag and message in Farsi.
"This morning, Baidu's domain name registration in the United States was tampered with, leading to inaccessibility," Baidu said in a statement.
Visitors to the site were greeted with the message: "This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army".
The message was accompanied by a picture of the national flag of Iran.
"In China, Baidu outranks Google as the search engine of choice, receiving millions of visits every day. That makes it an extremely attractive target for cybercriminals," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at security firm Sophos.
Political graffiti
It is not yet clear whether the site itself was compromised or its so-called DNS records.
DNS records are like a telephone book, converting website names like baidu.com into a sequence of numbers understandable by the internet.
"It's possible someone changed the lookup, meaning whenever surfers entered baidu.com into their browsers they were instead taken to a website that wasn't under the search engine's control," explained Mr Cluley.
It seems as if the hackers used the attack as an opportunity to create political graffiti rather than inflict real damage.
"If that third party website had contained malware then millions of computers could have been infected and identities stolen," said Mr Cluley.
"Attacks like this are a reminder to everyone that you always need to have security scanning every webpage you visit, even if it's a well-known legitimate website," he added.

@'BBC'

UPDATE

The Mohammadi Blame Game. Press TV, after carrying the message of Iran’s Foreign Ministry of “signs of the involvement of the Zionist regime [Israel], the US and their allies” in the killing of Professor Mohammadi, rolls out the latest accusation:

A terrorist group, whose radio station broadcast from the United States, took responsibility Tuesday for the fatal attack on an Iranian nuclear scientist in Tehran.

The Iran Royal Association, an obscure monarchist group that seeks to reestablish the Pahlavi reign in Iran, announced in a statement that its “Tondar Commandos” were behind the assassination of Masoud Ali-Mohammadi.

 And very quickly the “Iran Royal Association” denies the allegation.

@'Enduring America'

Israel and US behind blast that killed physicist says Tehran

Iranian state media have accused Israel and the US of being involved in a bomb attack which killed an Iranian physicist in Tehran.

State broadcaster Irib quoted Iran's foreign ministry spokesman as saying there were signs of Israeli and US involvement "in the terrorist act".
Masoud Ali Mohammadi - described as a "devoted revolutionary professor" - was killed by a remotely-controlled bomb.
Israel and the US have so far made no comments about Tuesday's blast.

ANALYSIS Jon Leyne, BBC Tehran correspondent The original story seemed straightforward. According to Iranian media, Masoud Ali Mohammadi was a nuclear scientist, assassinated by counter-revolutionaries, Zionists and agents of the "global arrogance". The implication was clear - it was a Western plot to sabotage Iran's nuclear programme. But as so often in Iran, there was more to it. According to British academics, Mr Mohammadi is an expert in another branch of physics, and highly unlikely to be involved in nuclear research. At the same time, the reformist movement issued what it said was evidence that Mr Mohammadi supported their presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi in last year's election. It all added to suspicions created by the unusually prompt and thorough coverage of his death in the Iranian media. Whatever actually happened, the opposition will certainly fear this killing will be used as an opportunity for a new crackdown.

Reports in the Iranian media described Mr Mohammadi as a nuclear physicist, but it appears that his field of study was quantum theory.
There was also confusion as to whether the attack had any political overtones.
One university official said Mr Mohammadi was not a political figure. But other reports said his name appeared on a list of academics backing opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi before the 2009 presidential election.
Tensions have been high in Iran since the disputed election led to mass protests against the government.
Mr Mohammadi, who worked at Tehran University, "was killed in a booby-trapped motorbike blast" in the city's northern Qeytariyeh district, state-run Press TV reported earlier.
It showed pictures from the scene of the blast, saying windows in the nearby buildings had been shattered by the force of the explosion.
'Triangle of wickedness'
Local media reports say the bomb was attached to a motorcycle parked outside Mr Mohammadi's home, although one agency said it had been planted in a rubbish bin.

Professor Mohammadi was killed as he was leaving his home, media say

Irib later quoted Iran's foreign ministry spokesman as saying that "in the initial investigation, signs of the triangle of wickedness by the Zionist regime, America and their hired agents, are visible in the terrorist act".
Press TV quoted security officials at the scene as saying that the equipment and system of the bomb used in the attack had been related to a number of foreign intelligence agencies, particularly Israel's Mossad.
In its earlier report, Irib said Mr Mohammadi "was martyred this morning in a terrorist act by anti-revolutionary and arrogant powers' elements".
The BBC's Tehran correspondent Jon Leyne, who is in London, says Iran usually refers to its enemies in the West as "the arrogant powers".
The opposition in Iran will fear that Tuesday's blast will be used against it as part of a crackdown, our correspondent adds.
Police sealed off the area and launched an investigation into the incident.
Some conservatives have suggested that the People's Mujahideen Organisation - a banned militant group opposed to the Tehran government - was involved. The group denied the accusation.
No-one has claimed responsibility for the blast and at this stage there could only be speculation as to possible motives for the attack, correspondents say.
There has been much controversy over Iran's nuclear activities.
Tehran says its nuclear programme is for peaceful energy purposes, but the US and other Western nations suspect it of seeking to build nuclear weapons.
In December, Tehran accused Saudi Arabia of detaining an Iranian nuclear scientist and handing him over to the US.
Saudi Arabia denied the claim.

@'BBC'

Out'n'about

Met up tonight with an old blogging compatriot 'The Sweet Spot Diviner' and when Rowland S. Howard was brought up in conversation I was asked if I had seen his brother Harry's band 'Pink Stainless Tail'?

Being a single mother of three I could only answer "I wish".

You can check them out 

HERE

Simon Reynolds' Notes on the noughties: Grime and dubstep – a noise you could believe in

If you were looking for something to believe in this last decade, you couldn't have done much better than that zone of music some of us have taken to calling the hardcore continuum.

In the noughties, sound-wise that meant grime and dubstep primarily (plus offshoots and edge cases like bassline and funky). But scene-wise it's fundamentally the same London-centric (but not limited to London) subculture that coalesced in the early 1990s and is based around pirate radio, dubplates, rewinds, MCs etc. What made it something to believe in? Well, there was the power of the music, obviously, and the way it seemed propelled by some relentless forward drive that was less a matter of ideology or aesthetic stance on the part of its creators than an inherent force within the music itself. Then there was its Britishness, and the things it told you about modern Britain: not always pretty, and not always communicated through words but through beats, bass, space and atmosphere. And finally it's because the music stirred up and surrounded itself with sharp thought at every level, from producers and artists to fans and professional observers. Some of this chatter was your typical inwardly focused "what's hot, what's not" discussion that you get in any musical niche, but quite a lot of it was attempting to work out the buried credo within the music, the reasons why it mattered and was so belief-worthy.

The hardcore continuum's claim to pre-eminence has always been that it's not just dance music. That's no slight to dance music, but the truth is that there's tons of it in the world, all different flavours, and if you fancied shaking your stuff in the noughties then you'd probably have been better off with hip-hop, or dancehall, or that hardy perennial house music. With jungle/garage/grime/dubstep, there's always been something extra, an X factor that made it "dance music + _____". The two main things that filled the blank were a) innovation, the idea that no other music around moved faster or mutated wider, and b) a relationship to "the real", whether that was coded as "street knowledge", "the dark side", late capitalism/post-socialist Britain, etc. In the noughties, the danceability element even slipped somewhat: grime was more moshable than groovy, while dubstep could be a bit slow-skank sluggish and head-noddy. But more relevant to this survey is that the pulse of those X-tra factors seemed to grow fainter as the decade proceeded, or at least more indistinct and muddled.

Let's look at innovation first. Dubstep's big foundational club called itself FWD>> but I think what happened in the noughties was that the innovatory drive shifted its axis and became less extensive than intensive: instead of giant strides into the unknown, it was about a quest for under-explored spaces and new hybrid possibilities within the frontiers staked out during the 90s. That decade had been convulsed by an acceleration (in tempo and complexity of rhythm) that impacted the dancefloor massive like g-force. Change was experientially measurable all through the 90s, in the way that the beats kept on testing the bodies of ravers. That headlong surge lasted from 1990-97: bpm kept rising, breakbeat science and bass-warpage got ever more intricate yet devastating. And then it hit a dead end. So the music stepped sideways into house-inspired sensuality, with speed garage. Assimilating R&B, the music got slower, slinkier and sexier and turned into 2step (and it's worth remembering that this decade started with 2step garage still reigning over the pop charts). Then UK garage itself split in two like a fertilised egg forming twins. Except these were non-identical twins: grime and dubstep, so unlike yet indissolubly bonded.

Where grime was verbose and articulate, dubstep was mute and atmospheric; where grime was aggressive and manic, dubstep was meditational and subdued. Although UK garage was the immediate ancestor, in crucial ways they were both more like the reactivation of different aspects of jungle. Grime's rapid-spat chat was the blossoming of the latent potential in jungle for the MC to become a star to rival the DJ, a genuine creative force. Dubstep picked up on the bass-drop, the aura of dread, the rootical echoes of 1970s reggae at its peak of spiritual militancy. But it shed jungle's hyperkinetic tempo and at the extreme (the style known as half-step) became as torpid as trip-hop. (Small wonder that Bristol was dubstep's second city.)

Grime and dubstep were brothers, often cohabiting on the same pirate stations, like Rinse FM. You didn't have to choose between the two, of course, but on a visceral, almost involuntary level the choice made itself for me. Grime was the one I believed in, or rather the one that kept me believing. From 2002-05 it felt like an unstoppable force, but in retrospect I can see why it never quite managed to bust through into the mainstream, at least on its own terms (as pure uncut grime as opposed to the innocuous poppified version that's topped the charts these last couple of years). With grime, those two X-tra factors were operating at full-tilt. The innovation was in your face, the jagged beats and harsh electronics making it music that few people would put on at home as relaxing listening. And then the real-ness was off the charts. For most British fans, I suspect, it was simply too close to home. Unlike American gangsta rap, which was well-produced and cinematic and had an element of exotic remoteness, grime was always going to remind non-converts, people from outside the scene itself, of hooded youths on the top deck of buses sodcasting tinny music at top volume out of their mobiles. But when it tried to nice itself up and play the pop game, it fell between two stools, as with Kano and Lady Sov's crossover bids.

In contrast, dubstep's slightly lower levels of the two X-tra factors enabled it to prosper. Not in chart terms obviously, but it steadily accumulated an international audience (who could understand its non-verbal message in a way they could never with grime's spraying verbals). It also became an album-based form that captivated listeners who rarely or never actually checked out dubstep as a dancefloor scene. Burial was the great genre ambassador here, but figures like Shackleton, Pinch, Martyn and 2562 also helped to spread the music's reach by making it home-listening compatible. For much of the noughties, my annual favorites list has included a bunch of dubstep full-lengths but as an ex-raver used to the artificial NRG vibe I've generally found the music too downtempo as a dancefloor experience. With a handful of exceptions (Skream's Midnight Request Line, Benga & Coki's Nite), the Big Tracks rarely feel like anthems to my ears, although the scene's bangers can be impressively ugly and inhuman (as with Coki's Spongebob, whose metallic wobble-riff is apparently made from the cartoon character's laugh slowed down drastically).

My other misgiving about dubstep was always the discernible disconnect between what the music was attempting to signify – tension, menace, sufferation, Babylon-shall-fall – and the affable mellowness of the scene itself. If you went to a jungle or UK garage night back in the day, there'd be a palpable tension in the audience that could be uncomfortable but lent the experience a certain electricity. But with dubstep, there was a degree of non-congruence between the music and the vibe. Being extensions of rave, jungle and garage were weekender scenes; their audiences had stuff they needed to release. I don't get the sense that the same function of social catharsis was ever really served by dubstep. In the early days the scene's foundational club FWD>> was a Sunday night event, which suggests that the people attending had more flexible lives than hardcore ravers. It's a different demographic, with a much higher proportion of people who've been through (or are still in) higher education, and who work in jobs to do with information, media, design, etc. Everybody finally waking up to this mismatch between the scene's signifiers and its actual social reality might explain why dubstep has veered so dramatically in the last year or so from dread and darkness towards a cartoon ultra-brightness suggestive both of videogames and psychedelics. This year's array of post-dubstep sounds are no longer chained to realness but are much more about garish hyper-reality. "Purple", the buzz-term for the Bristol-based micro-genre created by Joker, Guido and others, is colour rich in psychotropic associations, from Jimi's Purple Haze to the "purple drank" cough syrup that Dirty South gangsta rappers love to sip.

And then there's funky: another London pirate continuum offshoot that's unshackled itself from the real. Merging the traditions of disco house and Caribbean upfulness (soca, etc), funky is about pure celebration, with a songbook that entirely consists of songs of love'n'desire or injunctions to party. Funky gets near to being just dance music without any X-factor element. Certainly the realness that grime and dubstep both overstated in their different ways now mainly subsists in funky's demographic, the fact that its audience is street, from "the ends". As for the other X factor, funky's champions point to the broken rhythms and lo-tech grittiness of some productions as proof that the spirit of innovation does persist here, it just doesn't make such a big song'n'dance about da phuture like yer Photeks and Goldies did back in the day.

One way of thinking about the hardcore continuum is as a game of two halves: the 90s and the noughties. The question now is whether the current moment is just extra time or whether there can actually be a third half. Or is UK urban underground dance turning into a completely different game, a whole other sport with new rules?

@'The Guardian'

Sorry Simon, for probably the first time I disagree with you!

One only has to have got hold of the recent '5 Years of Hyperdub' compilation to hear that dubstep as it evolves IS where it is happening NOW.

But then we are both listening as ex-pats so what do we really know?
And I speak here as someone who apreciates that certain 'frisson' in the air having been to many a blues dance or sound-system from when I first set foot in London back in 1976.

Mick Green 1944-2010 RIP

Ah - good old Dingwalls!

Vladislav Delay - Toive

The Third & The Seventh

How Cocaine Scrambles Genes in the Brain

It's hardly a secret that taking cocaine can change the way you feel and the way you behave. Now, a study published in the Jan. 8 issue of Science shows how it also alters the way the genes in your brain operate. Understanding this process could eventually lead to new treatments for the 1.4 million Americans with cocaine problems, and millions more around the world.

The study, which was conducted on mice, is part of a hot new area of research called epigenetics, which explores how experiences and environmental exposures affect genes. "This is a major step in understanding the development of cocaine addiction and a first step toward generating ideas for how we might use epigenetic regulation to modulate the development of addiction," says Peter Kalivas, professor of neuroscience at the Medical University of South Carolina, who was not associated with the study. 

Though we think about our genes mostly in terms of the traits we pass on to our children, they are actually very active in our lives every day, regulating how various cells in our bodies behave. In the brain this can be especially powerful. Any significant experience triggers changes in brain genes that produce proteins — those necessary to help memories form, for example. But, says the study's lead author, Ian Maze, a doctoral student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, "when you give an animal a single dose of cocaine, you start to have genes aberrantly turn on and off in a strange pattern that we are still trying to figure out."

Maze's research focused on a particular protein called G9a that is associated with cocaine-related changes in the nucleus accumbens, a brain region essential for the experience of desire, pleasure and drive. The role of the protein appears to be to shut down genes that shouldn't be on. One-time use of cocaine increases levels of G9a. But repeated use works the other way, suppressing the protein and reducing its overall control of gene activation. Without enough G9a, those overactive genes cause brain cells to generate more dendritic spines, which are the parts of cells that make connections to other cells. 

Increases in the number of these spines can reflect learning. But in the case of addiction, that may involve learning to connect a place or a person with the desire for more drugs. Maze showed that even after a week of abstinence, mice given a new dose of cocaine still had elevated levels of gene activation in the nucleus accumbens, meaning G9a levels were still low. It is not known how long these changes can last. Maze also showed that when he intervened and raised G9a levels, the mice were less attracted to cocaine.

It's a big leap from a mouse study to a human study, of course — and an even bigger leap to consider developing a G9a-based treatment for addiction. The protein regulates so many genes that such a drug would almost certainly have unwanted and potentially deadly side effects. But a better understanding of the G9a pathways could lead to the development of safer, more specific drugs. And studying the genes that control G9a itself could also help screen people at risk for cocaine addiction: those with naturally lower levels of the protein would be the ones to watch. Still, there's a lot to be learned even from further mouse studies — particularly if the work involves younger mice, unlike the adults used in Maze's research. 

"We know that the greatest vulnerability [to addiction] occurs when adolescents are exposed," says Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which funded the study. "Would you see the same results in adolescent [mice]? And what happens during fetal exposure?"

New treatments are definitely needed for cocaine addiction: there are helpful medications for addiction to heroin and similar drugs, but so far, none are particularly useful against stimulants like cocaine and methamphetamine. And with federal reports now showing that more than two-thirds of all cocaine in the country is cut with a veterinary deworming drug called levamisole, which can cause potentially fatal immune-system problems, the risks from cocaine are greater — and the search for new answers more urgent than ever.

@'Time'

Smoking # 47

Che

Tom Waits Live at Theatre le Palace, Paris 27 April 1979

Audio available over at 'Aquarium Drunkard'

Interview with Shirin Ebadi

The conflict in Iran is coming to a head: The state confronts demonstrators by brutal force. BZ editor Annemarie Rösch discussed the situation with Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate from Tehran.

BZ: Ms Ebadi, when will you return to Iran?

Ebadi: Iran is my base. My husband is there, my family. Due to the difficult situation, there is currently more that I can do for my country from abroad. If I return to Iran, everything can happen to me. You see, my sister was arrested just recently. They have taken my sister hostage, because none of my children is in Iran. My husband also is in danger in Iran. However, I will not do what they want me to do, I will not be silent.

BZ: Do you consider yourself a member of the opposition?

Ebadi: I am a human rights activist. I must not side with any one position. I do not belong to any of the opposition groups.

BZ: Currently it looks like protests are growing. What is your opinion on that?

Ebadi: Meanwhile, there are protests even in minor cities. People continue to take to the streets, knowing that they might even be killed during a demonstration. This shows how serious they are about their protest against the regime. On the other hand, much less people followed Ahmadinejad's invitation to join the pro-government rallies - even though Ahmadinejad's people rewarded them for their participation.

BZ: Do the protesters want the regime to be reformed from within, or do they prefer to abolish it?

Ebadi: Currently, the slogan is still "Death to the dictator". This means that the protesters above all want Ahmadinejad to resign. Their peaceful protests show that they want a peaceful reform from within - for now. However, they might eventually start chanting "death to the system". The regime should listen to the demands of the Iranians. If they don't, the protests will turn more radical.

BZ: Can the revolutionary leader Ali Khamenei actually still afford to cling to president Ahmadinejad, whom the opposition accuses of electoral fraud?

Ebadi: Right now there is no indication that Khamenei is ready to abandon Ahmadinejad. However, everything is possible in Iran.

BZ: What is your interpretation of the aggressive actions of the regime against the opposition?

Ebadi: Khamenei and Ahmadinejad both know how dangerous the situation is for them. That's why there is an increasing extent of violence. The more a regime feels threatened, the more it will resort to violence - everywhere in the world.

BZ: Allegedly, Ahmadinejad has expanded his influence on the clergy. What is your view on that?

Ebadi: Ayatollah Khamenei still controls everything. The question is, however, how long this will last.

BZ: What is the role of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guards who so brutally confront the protesters?

Ebadi: Well, what is striking is that Ahmadinejad has given the Revolutionary Guards access to many key positions. Today even the Chief Prosecutor has an aide who is a member of the Revolutionary Guards. That the military has such an important position in the judiciary is unprecedented.

BZ: Is it possible that the regime of the clergy will be replaced by a military dictatorship?

Ebadi: As I said, currently everything is possible in Iran - even a military dictatorship.

BZ: Could Iran become the first democratic state in the Near East?

Ebadi: I wish that. I hope that negotiations will take place between the regime and the opposition before violence escalates. Since the Iranians still remember very well how painful the revolution 30 years ago was for them, how many people died, I still hope for a reconciliation of the different political camps.

BZ: What kind of democracy do the protesters have in mind?

Ebadi: Many probably wish for a democratic system where state and religion are separate. This is what I personally would prefer as well. However, this separation is not the most important thing for me. There are secular states that do not deserve to be called democracies. What Iran needs is truly free elections. How exactly this democracy will look like in the end needs to be negotiated.

@'Badische Zeitung'

Hector Zazou & Swara - Zannat