UR

It has been two decades since the most political group in the history of techno set out to change the course of electronic music: Underground Resistance. Time to pay tribute to the heralds of a sonic revolution.

In late 1989, on November 2 to be precise, two individuals from Detroit, Michigan, decided it was time for a change: 'Mad' Mike Banks, formerly a bass player for Parliament and producer for a dance music crew called Members of House, and Jeff 'The Wizard' Mills, at the time a DJ on local radio station WJLB, formed a collective henceforth known as the Underground Resistance. Inspired by radical factions of the civil rights movements, such as the Black Panthers, and political hip-hop groups like Public Enemy, UR desired to take social activism to a musical genre previously deemed incapable of conveying political messages: techno.

Where the genre's founding fathers had set their sights on an imagined future, UR opened their eyes to the dystopia of present day Detroit: Abandoned neighbourhoods, urban desolation, still prevailing racism, and cultural hegemony firmly in the hands of a privileged few.

Fuel for the Fire

While UR's initial collaborations with Members Of The House singer Yolanda Reynolds ('Your Time Is Up' and 'Living For The Nite') still clung to the blueprint of piano vocal house, Banks and Mills soon stepped up the intensity. The pair was joined by Robert 'Noise' Hood, who had previously featured as a rapper on the rare UR production 'Dance To The Beat', as a third member, and together the henceforth face- and nameless group entered their most productive phase.

In little over two years Banks, Hood and Mills recorded over a dozen 12"s in various permutations of the line-up, growing harder and more radical in both sound and image with each new release. The 'Sonic' and 'Waveform' EPs were followed by 'Riot' and 'Fuel For The Fire', and 'Punisher's permutation of the eponymous comic book hero's logo became the most iconic and eagerly reproduced symbol for UR's political cause against oppression, discrimination and cultural commercialisation.

Message to the Majors

1992 was to be a year of change: At the height of UR's success Jeff Mills and Robert Hood decided to leave the group to pursue solo careers. Reasons for the split have never been publicised, but it can be assumed that differences in creative vision were a factor. Hood and Mills both moved to New York to explore more minimalistic concepts of techno on their their newly founded M-Plant and Axis labels. Remaining member Mike Banks on the other hand continued the project by incorporating more of his funk and electro roots into UR's sound aesthetic. 'Final Frontier' and the unambiguous 'Message To The Majors' were the first ever UR records to employ broken beats while sounding as vigorous as ever.
After Hood and Mills' demise Mike Banks further opened up UR as a platform to feature and promote like-minded local artists. Veteran producer James Pennington (a.k.a. Suburban Knight) joined the ranks of the Resistance as did new artists like Scan-7, Gerald Mitchell and, perhaps most notably, Drexciya, a group long shrouded in mystery, whose brilliant experimental electro productions paved the way for a worldwide resurgence of the genre.

Condition Red

It was one of this new generation of artists who in 1999 suddenly found himself in the middle of UR's biggest success and at the same time biggest controversy. Together with Mad Mike and Gerald Mitchell, 'DJ Rolando' Rocha had recorded the track 'Jaguar'. Its ingenious chord progressions made the track a world-wide club hit, quickly crossing over from underground dance floors to stylish Ibiza discos.

Clever managers at Sony/BMG Germany took note, and, when UR unsurprisingly declined to license the track, decided to have it covered by studio musicians note by note. While to be considered legal by German law, the cover version outraged the group's fans and supporters as a symbol for the commercial exploitation UR have been opposing for so long. Amidst those protests, Sony/BMG eventually withdrew the release from the market and issued a letter of apology to UR - a small victory for the underground.

Transition

When UR's original headquarters had to make way for the new Red Wings Hockey Stadium at the beginning of the new millennium, the UR collective moved into a new building at 3000 E. Grand Blvd., along with related distribution company Submerge. UR once again entered a new phase with the '3000' building, designed and intended as communal hub for techno culture.

New artists once again joined the resistance's ranks, such as legendary Amsterdam techno producer Orlando Voorn, who lived in Detroit between 2003 and 2007, and numerous other artists, such as Santiago 'S²' Salazar and the anonymous Aquanauts. Mad Mike further returned to his live music roots, assembling an all-star band around his Galaxy 2 Galaxy project, which he has been taking on tour to much acclaim.

Besides the most recent UR album, 'Electronic Warfare 2.0', which includes the programmatic hit 'Kill My Radio Station', two compilations give an insight into the activities of Detroit's greatest producer collective over the past decade: 'Interstellar Fugitives' and its follow-up 'Interstellar Fugitives - Destruction of Order'. Besides these two exhaustive compilations, new UR releases might have become fewer and further between, but as long as they reach us via obscure channels from time to time, we can be certain that somewhere in Detroit the resistance is busy at work, plotting war on the programmers, and electrifying the city with sci-fi thoughts and hi-tech dreams.

@'Zero"

Naomi Klein Issues Haiti Disaster Capitalism Alert: Stop Them Before They Shock Again

But as I write about in The Shock Doctrine, crises are often used now as the pretext for pushing through policies that you cannot push through under times of stability. Countries in periods of extreme crisis are desperate for any kind of aid, any kind of money, and are not in a position to negotiate fairly the terms of that exchange. And I just want to pause for a second and read you something, which is pretty extraordinary. I just put this up on my website. The headline is “Haiti: Stop Them Before They Shock Again.” This went up a few hours ago, three hours ago, I believe, on the Heritage Foundation website. “Amidst the Suffering, Crisis in Haiti Offers Opportunities to the U.S. In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti’s long-dysfunctional government and economy as well as to improve the image of the United States in the region.” And then goes on. Now, I don’t know whether things are improving or not, because it took the Heritage Foundation thirteen days before they issued thirty-two free market solutions for Hurricane Katrina. We put that document up on our website, as well. It was close down the housing projects, turn the Gulf Coast into a tax-free free enterprise zone, get rid of the labor laws that forces contractors to pay a living wage. Yeah, so it took them thirteen days before they did that in the case of Katrina. In the case of Haiti, they didn’t even wait twenty-four hours. Now, why I say I don’t know whether it’s improving or not is that two hours ago they took this down. So somebody told them that it wasn’t couth. And then they put up something that was much more delicate. Fortunately, the investigative reporters at Democracy Now! managed to find that earlier document in a Google cache. But what you’ll find now is a much gentler “Things to Remember While Helping Haiti.” And buried down there, it says, “Long-term reforms for Haitian democracy and its economy are also badly overdue.” But the point is, we need to make sure that the aid that goes to Haiti is, one, grants, not loans. This is absolutely crucial. This is an already heavily indebted country. This is a disaster that, as Amy said, on the one hand is nature, is, you know, an earthquake; on the other hand is the creation, is worsened by the poverty that our governments have been so complicit in deepening. Crises—natural disasters are so much worse in countries like Haiti, because you have soil erosion because the poverty means people are building in very, very precarious ways, so houses just slide down because they are built in places where they shouldn’t be built. All of this is interconnected. But we have to be absolutely clear that this tragedy, which is part natural, part unnatural, must, under no circumstances, be used to, one, further indebt Haiti, and, two, to push through unpopular corporatist policies in the interests of our corporations. And this is not a conspiracy theory. They have done it again and again. Video @'Democracy Now'

Italy cancels Haiti's debt

The Italian government will cancel the debt of 40 million owed to Italy announced Foreign Minister Franco Frattini in Rome today.

"We are ready from now to cancel Haiti's debt to Italy," Frattini said on his arrival at Rome's Ciampino airport after returning from a mission in Africa.

The cancellation, he said, may represent a "first step for the beginning of reconstruction" of the Caribbean island devastated by the earthquake that has claimed tens of thousands dead.

Italy has already announced a shipment of five million euros to aid necessities.

Now for other countries to follow...?

US waves white flag in disastrous 'war on drugs'

After 40 years of defeat and failure, America's "war on drugs" is being buried in the same fashion as it was born – amid bloodshed, confusion, corruption and scandal. US agents are being pulled from South America; Washington is putting its narcotics policy under review, and a newly confident region is no longer prepared to swallow its fatal Prohibition error. Indeed, after the expenditure of billions of dollars and the violent deaths of tens of thousands of people, a suitable epitaph for America's longest "war" may well be the plan, in Bolivia, for every family to be given the right to grow coca in its own backyard.

The "war", declared unilaterally throughout the world by Richard Nixon in 1969, is expiring as its strategists start discarding plans that have proved futile over four decades: they are preparing to withdraw their agents from narcotics battlefields from Colombia to Afghanistan and beginning to coach them in the art of trumpeting victory and melting away into anonymous defeat. Not surprisingly, the new strategy is being gingerly aired in the media of the US establishment, from The Wall Street Journal to the Miami Herald.

Prospects in the new decade are thus opening up for vast amounts of useless government expenditure being reassigned to the treatment of addicts instead of their capture and imprisonment. And, no less important, the ever-expanding balloon of corruption that the "war" has brought to heads of government, armies and police forces wherever it has been waged may slowly start to deflate.

Prepare to shed a tear over the loss of revenue that eventual decriminalisation of narcotics could bring to the traffickers, large and small, and to the contractors who have been making good money building and running the new prisons that help to bankrupt governments – in the US in particular, where drug offenders – principally small retailers and seldom the rich and important wholesalers – have helped to push the prison population to 1,600,000; their imprisonment is already straining federal and state budgets. In Mississippi, where drug offenders once had to serve 85 per cent of their sentences, they are now being required to serve less than a quarter. California has been ordered to release 40,000 inmates because its prisons are hugely overcrowded.

At the same time, some in the US are confused and fear that the new commission proposed by Congressman Eliot Engel, a man with a record of hostility to the Cuban and Venezuelan governments, may prove to be a broken reed. As he brought in his bill he added timidly: "Let me be absolutely clear that this bill has not been introduced to support the legalisation of illegal drugs. That is not something that I would like to see."

Part of the reason for the slow US retreat from the "war" is that the strategy of fighting it in foreign lands and not at home has proved valueless. Along the already sensitive frontier with Mexico the effect of US attempts to enforce a hard line by blasting drug dealers away has been bloody. Anxious to keep in check the flood of illegal immigrants into territory that once belonged to Mexico, Washington is building a wall and fence comparable to that which once cut through Berlin and that which is today causing havoc between Israelis and Palestinians.

In the areas of Mexico closest to the US frontier the toll of deaths in drug-related violence exceeded 7,000 people in 2009 (1,000 of them dying in January and February). This takes the death toll over three years to above 16,000, figures far in excess of US fatalities in Afghanistan. The bloodshed has continued despite – or perhaps because of – the intense US pressure on President Felipe Calderon to station a large part of the Mexican army in the region. It is deploying 49,000 men on its own soil in the campaign against drugs, a larger force than the 46,000 Britain sent to take part in the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003. But still the blood flows.

As in Colombia, where a multibillion-dollar US subsidy maintains that country's armed forces, there are well-founded suspicions that military operations are often rendered futile because the miserably paid local commanders and individual soldiers are easily bought off by drug dealers.

The quiet expiry of the "war" has dawned slowly on a world focused on the US's more palpable conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Last month, the US House of Representatives gave unanimous approval to a bill creating an independent commission to reconsider domestic and international drug policies and suggest better ones. Congressman Engel, a Democrat from the Bronx and the sponsor of the bill, declared: "Billions upon billions of US taxpayer dollars have been spent over the years to combat the drug trade in Latin America and the Caribbean. In spite of our efforts, the positive results are few and far between."

As far back as last May, Gil Kerlikowske, the former police chief of Seattle who was named head of the US Office of National Drug Control Policy and thus boss of the campaign, announced he would not be using the term "war on drugs" any more. A few weeks earlier, former Latin American presidents of the centre and right – Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and Cesar Gaviria of Colombia – had told the new US President that the "war" had failed and appealed for greater emphasis on cutting drug consumption and the decriminalisation of cannabis.

For the lives and sanity of millions, the seeing of the light is decidedly late. The conditions of the 1920s, when the US Congress outlawed alcohol and allowed Al Capone and his kin to make massive fortunes, have been re-created up and down Latin America.

Mexico's President has not been afraid to point out to Washington that official corruption is at the root of drug trafficking in the US just as it is in Mexico. "I say we should investigate on both sides. I'm cleaning my house and I hope that on the other side as well the house is being cleaned," he said pointedly last April before President Obama came visiting.

Furthermore, President Calderon says that lax gun control laws in the US caused an influx of firearms into Mexico. He has declared that 90 per cent of the 30,000 weapons that government forces seized from drug dealers in Mexico came from north of the border. For their part, the Latin Americans, under a new generation of more self-confident leaders, are tired of being hectored about their failings by the US, the world's principal source of cannabis whose agents continue the drug dealing they indulged in during the Iran-Contra affair of the Reagan years.

Evidence points to aircraft – familiarly known as "torture taxis" – used by the CIA to move captives seized in its kidnapping or "extraordinary rendition" operations through Gatwick and other airports in the EU being simultaneously used for drug distribution in the Western hemisphere. A Gulfstream II jet aircraft N9875A identified by the British Government and the European Parliament as being involved in this traffic crashed in Mexico in September 2008 while en route from Colombia to the US with a load of more than three tons of cocaine.

In 2004, another torture taxi crashed in a field in Nicaragua with a ton of cocaine aboard. It had been identified by Britain and the European Parliament's temporary committee on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transport and illegal detention of prisoners as a frequent visitor in 2004 and 2005 to British, Cypriot, Czech, German, Greek, Hungarian, Spanish and other European cities with its cargo of captives for secret imprisonment and torture in Iraq, Jordan and Azerbaijan.

Given the circumstances, it is unremarkable that US strictures are being politely ignored. President Evo Morales of Bolivia – criticised by the US for defending Bolivians' practice of chewing coca leaves to assuage hunger and altitude sickness – wants to allow every Bolivian family around the city of Cochabamba to cultivate coca bushes for their own use. He also wants to export coca leaves to his country's neighbours. Mr Morales's authority, recently reinforced by winning a second presidential term in fair elections and by a strengthening of Bolivia's economy, has no need to worry about US criticism.

Venezuela and Bolivia have expelled US narcotics officers from their territory. At the end of last month, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador ended Washington's lease of a large air base on the Pacific from where US aircraft were engaged in the struggle against the region's increasingly powerful left.

This year should be the year that common sense vanquishes the mailed fist in an unwinnable war against an invisible enemy.

@'The Independent'

Public Transport Minister Lynne Kosky quits politics

Bye...

As a non driver let us hope that someone less arrogant will actually listen to our complaints about the system and don't get me started on Myki!!!

How Ayn Rand Became an American Icon by Johann Hari

Ayn Rand is one of America's great mysteries. She was an amphetamine-addicted author of sub-Dan Brown potboilers, who in her spare time wrote lavish torrents of praise for serial killers and the Bernie Madoff-style embezzlers of her day. She opposed democracy on the grounds that "the masses"—her readers—were "lice" and "parasites" who scarcely deserved to live. Yet she remains one of the most popular writers in the United States, still selling 800,000 books a year from beyond the grave. She regularly tops any list of books that Americans say have most influenced them. Since the great crash of 2008, her writing has had another Benzedrine rush, as Rush Limbaugh hails her as a prophetess. With her assertions that government is "evil" and selfishness is "the only virtue," she is the patron saint of the tea-partiers and the death panel doomsters. So how did this little Russian bomb of pure immorality in a black wig become an American icon?
Two new biographies of Rand—Goddess of the Market by Jennifer Burns and Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne Heller—try to puzzle out this question, showing how her arguments found an echo in the darkest corners of American political life.* But the books work best, for me, on a level I didn't expect. They are thrilling psychological portraits of a horribly damaged woman who deserves the one thing she spent her life raging against: compassion.

 Continue reading

 @'Slate'

Police unleash pepper gas on protesters in Arizona

More than 10,000 demonstrators came out on January 16 to protest against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his repression of unauthorized immigrants. In the latest and largest in a series of protests against Sheriff Joe, demonstrators marched to MCSO's "tent city", an urban concentration camp where inmates, many arrested on immigration charges, are held 24-7 in the open air.

While marchers focused on Arpaio's 287g arrangement with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement and his high-profile immigration raids, other participants questioned the focus on immigration alone, given the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office's role in forclosure evictions, and also that the Phoenix Police Department turned over more unauthorized migrants to ICE in fiscal year 2009 than did Arpaio's sheriff's department.

Toward the end of the day, police attacked marchers, indiscriminately deploying pepper gas in an area that included a number of young children and families. In addition to street medics, EMTs were called to provide emergency care to at least three individuals, including an infant and young child. Five individuals were singled out for arrest and are being charged with aggravated assault of a police officer. In a news story on the march, the Arizona Republic repeated police statements that demonstrators attacked a police horse with metal poles, despite such allegations contradicting numerous eye-witness accounts, including the following post to Arizona Indymedia:

"Unprovoked, a female officer on horseback (who later covered her name on her uniform) charged her horse headlong into the march, colliding with several people and in the process almost running over at least one child in a stroller. After attacking families and protesters, she then whipped out her pepper spray and let loose on the whole crowd, who fled the noxious spew. In the process, children were blasted with pepper spray. After that, other Phoenix PD officers stormed the crowd, violently attacking marchers, dragging several to the ground and further deploying their chemical weapons from all directions in an attempt to justify their their aggression by nabbing a few people. Dozens were so affected that they were soaked in chemicals, having to strip off clothes to stop the burning."

We couldn't agree with Sal Reza more when he says, "There was provocation by some groups who came here for their own purpose to disrupt a peaceful march." We know he isn't talking about us, because he invited members of the Diné, O'odham, anarchist/anti-authoritarian bloc on stage to speak at the rally at Falcon Park.
 So, who is the outside faction Sal's talking about? In our opinion it must be the Phoenix Police. Unprovoked, a female officer on horseback (who later covered her name on her uniform) charged her horse headlong into the march, colliding with several people and in the process almost running over at least one child in a stroller. After attacking families and protesters, she then whipped out her pepper spray and let loose on the whole crowd, who fled the noxious spew. In the process, children were blasted with pepper spray.

After that, other Phoenix PD officers stormed the crowd, violently attacking marchers, dragging several to the ground and further deploying their chemical weapons from all directions in an attempt to justify their aggression by nabbing a few people. Dozens were so affected that they were soaked in chemicals, having to strip off clothes to stop the burning. Street medics (not Phoenix Fire Department) and other protesters came to each others' aid. At the end of the melee, out of the more than a hundred that marched together, four of our comrades were in chains and countless others stood bleeding, bruised and momentarily stunned.

Still, shaking it off, we rallied, facing down the cops, until eventually they withdrew. We celebrated and took turns speaking out about what it's like to be under attack by a system that values property and power over people.

Indeed, during the entire march the Phoenix police had been provoking marchers. Riding bikes and golf carts into people. Pushing and shoving. For what? To keep one northbound lane open? Rather than assaulting people expressing their legitimate desires to see an end to oppression, why not shut down the street? Cops do traffic control all the time. What's wrong with PPD? Why, for instance, is it somehow possible for Tempe PD to shut down Tempe streets tomorrow for the corporate schlock that is "PF Chang's Rock n' Roll Marathon," but not for PPD to close off a few streets so that people can assemble without threat of attack? Truly a backwards system indeed!

The police have so far put forward several different explanations for what happened, all of which contradict each other. On one channel they say that they were breaking up a fight. On another they say that people were throwing bottles. And on and on. What'll it be in five minutes, we wonder? The contradictory stories ought to be your first clue that what they're claiming happened didn't in fact happen. No surprise that the media swallowed it. But if we know they're lying, we have to wonder why anyone else would defend their actions?

Did people fight back against the police assault. We don't know because our eyes were full of pepper spray, but we wouldn't begrudge them if they did. To be charged into by a twelve hundred pound horse, while attacked by thugs using chemical weapons necessarily evokes the instinct to fight back, especially when your enemy is so vile as to assault children. Police demand the impossible from people. They expect you to allow them to attack you while at the same time demanding that you suppress you gut, human tendency to defend yourself. There is nothing "peaceful" in that relationship. That sort of power relation is one that condemns those who resist while exonerating the violence of those from above. It reflects the current distribution of power -- a distribution we want to change drastically. This is as unnatural as fighting power without taking action. Movements, like people, have a right to self-defense. For us, that has to be in the form of direct action and civil disobedience against the system. It must be made not to work unless our demands are met. No more mediation through shady politicians. No more appealing to power through moral arguments. We can take our futures into our own hands, directly.

Still, we're not surprised that the police attacked. While it seems the leaders of the movement are eager to make excuses for police who attack children, we know that what we saw today is but a glimpse of what the cops do everyday. We see it with our own eyes. They are the outside, alien force that first and foremost defends white supremacy and capitalism. How can someone say they are organizing a "peaceful march" when they work with such sadists? Naturally they were going to attack the march eventually, especially considering the militaristic fashion in which they deployed. Phoenix PD deports more migrants than Sheriff Joe and yet we are told that we ought to give them a pass so that we can focus on that clown Arpaio? We saw today just how foolish that strategy is.

In our eyes, this is but a symptom of the failure of the strategy being pursued by the movement as it is. White supremacy in Arizona goes far beyond one ancient sheriff in one county. Ballot measures attacking people of color will almost certainly pass in Arizona yet again this year with 70 or 80 percent margins. Is this Sheriff Joe's fault? Obviously not. But marches against Joe won't stop that.

We need a broader movement with a critique beyond Joe so that we can challenge the whole problem -- one that stretches from Tohono O'odham land down south to the land of the Diné up north. And everywhere in between. And we need to break from this mode of organizing that can only deliver more oppression and more violence down on our heads. No more politicians. No more working with cops. Look what it brings.

This is why we supported the call for the Diné, O'odham, anarchist/anti-authoritarian bloc. For someone to say now when it is inconvenient that we are an outside force is to replicate the marginalization that for centuries has dominated the discourse around land and movement in this region. But PCWC's native comrades didn't come from outside. They were always here. And we stand with them.

@'Indybay'

Art by Khawar Bilal

KHAWAR BILAL

Soultek - Analog Heart (Ghosthacked by Area)

     

Some cannabis with your main course?

A cannabis laced icecream stand during the "Million Marijuana March", Prague 2009

As of New Year’s Day 2010, Czechs in possession of small quantities of narcotics need no longer fret about trouble with the law. That comes as no surprise in a country in which marijuana is, for many, part of everyday life, remarks Polish journalist Mariusz Szczygiel.

I was surprised, 10 years ago, when I chanced upon a bottle of vodka containing marijuana in the fanciest delicatessen in Prague: there were pot seeds floating in the oily, straw-hued 40% proof spirit. I was surprised to find a recipe book entitled “We Cook With Cannabis” on sale in the bookshop next door. I was surprised to read that, faced with the dilemma “Eat it or smoke it?”, the author’s verdict was “eat it”. Because when inhaled, the effects kick in right away, or within five minutes, but only last for two hours; whereas when ingested in any dish you like, it takes half an hour, or even an hour and a half, for the effects to kick in, but the high lasts for eight whole hours.

I was surprised when the bookseller apprised me that the practice of cooking with cannabis was still quite rudimentary in the Czech Republic. People use it any which way, blending arbitrary quantities thereof with all manner of ingredients, though as a matter of fact it calls for special dishes that are specially conceived for marijuana mixing – which is why the recipe book is indispensable. I was surprised when, at the end of a trial that dragged on for years, the Czech court in Olomouc acquitted the publishers and authorised the sale of the book. I was surprised to hear that the first calls to legalise cannabis in Czechoslovakia were made in a student newspaper called Zverdlo only a few months after the collapse of communism.

Vaclav Havel likes dope too

I was surprised to hear that in 2000 president Havel pardoned a 19-year-old who had proffered some of his weed to two younger boys, for which he had been dealt a suspended four-year sentence. “I wouldn’t have been able to look at myself in the mirror,” declared the president, who was a pot smoker himself. I was surprised when the medical school at Charles University in Prague created an “Addictology” department at its psychiatric hospital, which promptly undertook scientific studies of marijuana consumption. I was surprised to learn that the Czechs lead Europe in cannabis consumption, well ahead of the Dutch. In 2004 one out of ten Europeans, and one out of five Czechs, smoked marijuana. I was surprised to learn that, now that the authorities turn a blind eye to cannabis consumption, the prevalence of hard drugs has plummeted in the Czech Republic. I was surprised that the same goes for beer: the more beer Czechs drink, the less hard liquor they imbibe. I was surprised that a drug that is formally prohibited, as is the case with marijuana, is the subject of two official magazines in the Czech Republic, Konoptikum and Soft Secrets.

I was surprised that the first information about growing marijuana at home under artificial light appeared in the early 1990s in the very serious weekly Reflex: in the form of a guide for patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease, which can be treated using cannabis. I was surprised that since 2004 the same magazine holds an annual contest, the Reflex Cannabis Cup, for the best photographs of home-grown pot plants, replete with four different prize categories: “Indoor”, “Outdoor”, “Beauty” and “Ikebana”. I was surprised that a thousand pictures are entered every year and that the entrants, including the prize-winners, remain anonymous. The identities of only half the jury members are disclosed to the public: there are celebrities on the jury who don’t know much about pot, and unknowns who know absolutely everything about home-growing.

Czechs have a beautiful culture

I was surprised that the first selection of photographs is personally undertaken by the magazine’s editor-in-chief (who, by the way, after having seen Andrzej Wajda’s film Katyn on Czech television, said to me in an e-mail, “The Czechs have a beautiful culture, but the Poles a beautiful soul.”) I was surprised that the magazine prints a special warning that the use of this drug before the age of 16 is harmful, that it can lead to psychosis in adolescents, that it can easily be overdosed in prepared dishes, that smoking it is dangerous and, like any inhaled organic matter, carcinogenic. I was surprised that the editors advise readers “DON’T SMOKE!” and recommend use of a marijuana inhaler, which is supposed to protect against the very harmful effects of tarry substances. When I learned that, as of 1 January, growing cannabis for personal use (up to five plants) and possession of small amounts (e.g. up to 15 grams of cannabis) are no longer penalised under Czech law, I was not surprised.

@'Presseurop'

Angelite, Huun-Huur-Tu, Moscow Art Trio - Mountain Tale

Absolutely haunting!

D.B.Rielly - We're All Going Straight To Hell

The latest figures from Haiti

“The bleak tally now at 50,000 dead, 250,000 injured and 1.5 million homeless…” 

@'Radio Canada'

Hmmm, notice that the word 'Exile' is on the list

(Click to enlarge)

Tom Waits - Ol' 55 (Live 1999)

The Spacehopper invasion

Czarna Dalia (Black Dahlia)

Er...I do!

davidhepworth

  

Why don't we just surrender to the inevitable and spell it "definately"? about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

Spank!

Via 'This isn't happiness'

Len Faki - Rainbow Delta

What's on my mind...

...don't ask!

Afghan MPs reject many new Karzai cabinet nominees

The Afghan parliament has rejected 10 of 17 new cabinet nominees suggested by President Hamid Karzai.

The vote comes two weeks after MPs turned down most of Mr Karzai's first choices, dealing him a serious blow.
Two key posts were approved - Mr Karzai's former security adviser Zalmay Rasul as foreign minister and Habibullah Ghalib as justice minister.
However, MPs backed only one of the three women nominees, Amina Afzali, as work and social affairs minister.
The two women put forward for the posts of public health and women's affairs were rejected.
The BBC's Mark Dummett, in Kabul, says Mr Karzai had hoped to have his new cabinet in place before a crucial donor conference in London on 28 January, but that now appears impossible.
However despite the setback, the president now has 14 of 24 ministers confirmed including the most powerful ones in charge of foreign, defence and interior ministries, our correspondent adds.
It is not yet clear when the president will propose names to fill the vacant positions and when Parliament will vote for these candidates.
After the first vote on 2 January, Mr Karzai ordered MPs to cancel their winter break to speed up progress towards getting a functioning government in place.
The rejection of 17 of Mr Karzai's 24 original choices was seen as a blow to his authority, already damaged after an election marred by fraud in August.
The new list included none of the previously rejected nominees.
MPs spent the last week questioning the new candidates ahead of Saturday's vote, which was carried out by secret ballot.
Some had complained that candidates were not suitably qualified or that others were too closely aligned to warlords.
Mr Karzai faces strong international pressure to create a government that can oversee reforms.
The UN has said international funding for Afghanistan's parliamentary elections this year will depend on reform of the country's election institutions.
Mr Karzai is also under pressure to form a government before a crucial donor conference in London on 28 January.

@'BBC'

Well at least we drew. I'm stoked *sigh*

Match report

HERE
...and the rumours continue of more exits alongside Gerrard & Torres at the end of the season.

Afghanistan “Hearts and Minds” Special: Take a Photo, Win a Camera!

The NATO Joint Forces Command in Afghanistan announces a photo contest: “Why Afghanistan Matters”. From the website:

Here’s your chance to let the world see “Why Afghanistan Matters” through your lens!
Send us your original photos and compete for the chance to win one of FIVE digital cameras! The public will be asked to choose a winner in one of the following four categories, with a panel of judges selecting an overall winner from the top three in all categories.

Here are some examples, in NATO’s eyes, of photos you might want to submit.

Here, EA suggests, are photos that might not get you that “brand new Nikon D90 12.3MP Digital SLR Camera plus a Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G AF-S ED VRII Telephoto Zoom Lens”:

@'Enduring America'

HA! (True story)

A floor collapsed beneath a group of about 20 members of Weight Watchers as they gathered to compare how many pounds they had shed over Christmas.

Members of the weight-loss club were lining up to compare readings on the scales when they heard a bang as the floor came away from the walls of their meeting room in Växjö in southern Sweden.

“We suddenly heard a huge thud – we almost thought it was an earthquake and everything flew up in the air. The floor collapsed in one corner of the room and along the walls,” one of the those present told the Smålandsposten newspaper.

They abandoned the room as the floor started to give way in other areas.

"We are going to have to find a replacement premises," Therese Levin, a consultant for Weight Watchers told the newspaper.

No one was injured in the incident, the cause of which is being investigated. The scales were not damaged and the weigh-in continued in a nearby corridor.

@'The Times'

(Thanx Stan!)

Why France is still in love with Serge

To older Britons, Serge Gainsbourg will always be the ugly, unshaven Frenchman who sang a filthy pop duet with a sweet English rose.
In France, he is remembered either as one of the great masters of chanson française or a drunken, pretentious, unpatriotic bore. Both sides of Serge Gainsbourg's career – and his little-known early years as a terrified Jewish child in wartime France – are explored in a bio-pic opening in France next week. The movie, Gainsbourg, une vie héroique (Gainsbourg, A Heroic Life) is, in its way, as poignant and painful as the singer's own life. One of its principal roles, that of Gainsbourg's British muse and third wife, Jane Birkin, is played, brilliantly, by a young British actress, Lucy Gordon, who committed suicide soon after the film was completed last year. The director, Joann Sfar, previously a writer of comic-strip books, has dedicated his movie to Ms Gordon, who was 29 when she died. "The film owes a great deal to the warmth, the sweetness and the immense talent of Lucy Gordon," Mr Sfar said. "Her personality was so luminous, so light, so funny." French film critics who saw a gala première in Paris on Thursday night also gave high praise to Ms Gordon's portrayal of Jane Birkin. They were equally impressed by the performance of the French theatre actor, Eric Elmosnino, as Gainsbourg at the height of his career. They were less convinced by the model and actress Laetitia Casta's portrayal of the French sex symbol and queen of pout, Brigitte Bardot, one of the singer's many other conquests. A curiosity of the film is Mr Sfar's insistence that the actors must sing for themselves and not mime to original recordings. The recreation by Ms Gordon and Mr Elmosnino of the 1969 classic of heavy breathing and orgasmic noises, "Je t'aime, Moi non plus" – Gainsbourg's only global hit – is reasonably convincing. Other actors' efforts range from the effective to the courageous to the karaoke borderline. Mr Sfar admits that he has simplified and exaggerated the life of a man who, in any case, loved to caricature himself. By doing so he has angered Ms Birkin, now a 62-year-old English rose and the most popular Briton living in France. As the chief guardian of the temple of Gainsbourg's memory, she insisted that the film's title must be followed by a disclaimer describing it as not a biography but a "conte" or "folk-tale" by the director. Another curiosity of the movie is the fact that Mr Sfar originally tried to cast the daughter of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, the actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, as her father. Ms Gainsbourg considered this startling offer but then refused. Mr Elmosnino, 45, looks, in fact, much more like the seductively unlovely Gainsbourg than the singer's beautiful daughter does. When asked once to explain his serial success with women despite what he described as his "cabbage-head" looks, Gainsbourg said: "Ugliness is superior to beauty because it lasts longer." A further curiosity in the film is that Gainsbourg is portrayed as constantly battling with an alter-ego – humorous and creative but also self-destructive – which assumes a physical form, played by the American actor, Doug Jones. The director, Mr Sfar, said that he wanted to tell the story of a man who had a "love- hate relationship with his country and the women he loved ... a man who was terrified of being alone and had a desperate desire to be liked but muddled the love of his loved ones and the love of the public." The story of Gainsbourg's often destructive relationships with women will also be examined in a documentary which will be shown on French TV next week. Gainsbourg was born in Paris as Lucien Ginsburg, the son of a poor Russian-Jewish immigrant family in 1928. As a 12-year-old child in Vichy France, he was forced to wear a yellow star and was lucky to escape deportation to the death camps. After the war, he attempted unsuccessfully to become a painter before finding work as a songwriter and a crooner in bars. Edith Piaf asked him to write songs for her but he declined. His early career as a pop singer and pop writer, after his first album in 1958, was a mixture of rebellion, originality and cynical mimicry of commercial pop. He wrote songs for, among others, Juliette Greco, Petula Clarke and Françoise Hardy, Marianne Faithfull, Anna Karina and Nana Mouskouri. He even composed a Eurovision Song Contest winner – "Poupée de Cire, Poupée de Son" – for France Gall in 1965. He wrote an album of songs for the actress Catherine Deneuve and sang duets – and had a year-long love affair – with Brigitte Bardot. The infamous "Je t'aime. Moi non Plus" ("I love you. Me neither") was originally written for and recorded with Bardot but she banned its release (a judgement seconded by the BBC and the Vatican when the celebrated Jane Birkin version emerged in 1969). In the last decade, Gainsbourg has become a cult hero and inspiration to British bands from Portishead to Franz Ferdinand. He has also been rediscovered by young people in his home country as one of the few truly original musicians that France produced in the classic years of pop and rock. He is now seen as a precursor of Queen or David Bowie – as someone who successfully spliced rock and jazz and classical music and a writer who produced poetic rather than crass pop lyrics (although he also wrote plenty of those in his time). The first half of the 130-minute movie follows Gainsbourg's life when he was still Ginsburg, a shy, poetic boy and teenager, ashamed of what he calls his "ugly Jewish face". The second half – less effective according to French critics – shows his emergence as "Gainsbourg", the provocative womaniser and singer-songwriter. It ends with his descent into alcoholism as the man that the French press nicknamed "Gainsbarre". But the film steers clear of one of his most disturbing aspects: his obsession in song with the sexual attraction of under-age girls.  

 @'The Independant'

(Thanx Nick!)

Obama confidant's spine-chilling proposal by Glenn Greenwald

Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama's closest confidants.  Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama's head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for "overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs."  In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-"independent" advocates to "cognitively infiltrate" online groups and websites -- as well as other activist groups -- which advocate views that Sunstein deems "false conspiracy theories" about the Government.  This would be designed to increase citizens' faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists.  The paper's abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here.
Sunstein advocates that the Government's stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into "chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups."  He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called "independent" credible voices to bolster the Government's messaging (on the ground that those who don't believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government).   This program would target those advocating false "conspiracy theories," which they define to mean: "an attempt to explain an event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role."  Sunstein's 2008 paper was flagged by this blogger, and then amplified in an excellent report by Raw Story's Daniel Tencer.
There's no evidence that the Obama administration has actually implemented a program exactly of the type advocated by Sunstein, though in light of this paper and the fact that Sunstein's position would include exactly such policies, that question certainly ought to be asked.  Regardless, Sunstein's closeness to the President, as well as the highly influential position he occupies, merits an examination of the mentality behind what he wrote.  This isn't an instance where some government official wrote a bizarre paper in college 30 years ago about matters unrelated to his official powers; this was written 18 months ago, at a time when the ascendancy of Sunstein's close friend to the Presidency looked likely, in exactly the area he now oversees.  Additionally, the government-controlled messaging that Sunstein desires has been a prominent feature of U.S. Government actions over the last decade, including in some recently revealed practices of the current administration, and the mindset in which it is grounded explains a great deal about our political class.  All of that makes Sunstein's paper worth examining in greater detail...

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@'Salon'

Remember...

Duck hunters spark nuclear weapons plant lockdown in Texas

A pair of duck hunters have trigged a security alert at a nuclear weapons assembly plant in Amarillo, Texas.

Officials locked the plant after getting reports of individuals in camouflage gear stalking across the road from the factory.
They turned out to be two plant employees who had decided to spend their day off hunting fowl.
The plant was briefly shut as a "precautionary measure," a plant official said.
"They were just doing what people do around here," said Carson County Sheriff Tam Terry.
"They just had a lot more company than they were planning on."
The pair, who sparked the alert when spotted early in the morning carrying arms and dressed in camouflage gear, were later found in a nearby field setting up goose decoys.
No charges will be filed against the men who both had permission to hunt from the local landowner.

@'BBC'

(Thanx Carolyn!)

WTF???

Was just reading in the 'Guardian Weekly' from a couple of weeks ago that in certain parts of the UK, kids at school are being forced to wear goggles when playing conkers!!!

We are producing an entire generation of children with absolutely no sense of resilience and coping skills...

Thinking of the children? Hmmm!
(And the school that enforces that kids have to wear goggles when using blue-tac... JeebusHfugnchrist!!!)

OiNK Admin Found Not Guilty, Walks Free

Lawyers have presented their final arguments in the trial of Alan Ellis. The prosecution slammed the ex-OiNK admin, saying that the site was set up with dishonest and profiteering intentions right from the start. The defense tore into IFPI and countered by calling Ellis an innovator with talents to be nurtured. Today the jury returned a unanimous verdict of not guilty, and Ellis walked free.

After a very long wait of more than two years, last week the OiNK trial got underway with the prosecution making their case against Alan Ellis. This week it was the turn of the defense and yesterday both sides had the opportunity to summarize their positions by submitting their closing arguments to the jury at Teesside Crown Court.

Peter Makepeace, prosecuting, naturally painted an extremely negative picture, labeling the Pink Palace as a place designed from the ground up as a personal money-making machine for Ellis.

“21 million downloads. 600,000-plus albums. £300,000. This was a cash cow, it was perfectly designed to profit him and it was as dishonest as the day is long,” said Makepeace.

It is common sense to come to the conclusion that Oink was dishonest, claimed the prosecution lawyer, adding that Ellis knows that it’s dishonest “to promote, encourage and facilitate criminal activity,” and accusing him of telling the jury “persistent, cunning, calculated lies.”

It would, of course, be dishonest to promote “criminal activity”, but Mr Makepeace should be very well aware that the activity engaged in by OiNK’s users is covered under civil law.

Switching momentarily from criticism to praise and then back again, Makepeace said that the OiNK website was a “wonderful machine” for sharing music but noted that while the site had a really good brand name, it was a brand synonymous with “ripping off music.”

University of London professor Birgitte Andersenok gave evidence earlier in the trial, stating that file-sharing didn’t hurt the music industry and led to more sales. Mr Makepeace trashed her evidence.

“It’s nonsense, it’s flannel, it’s verbiage, it’s garbage,” he told the Court.

For the defense, Alex Stein said that Ellis had never knowingly acted dishonestly and that in 2004 when OiNK was launched, it was a “brave new world” on the Internet.

“In many societies he’d be an innovator, a creator, a Richard Branson. His talent would be moulded, not crushed by some sort of media organization,” he said.

The media organization being referred to by Stein was the IFPI, who he said had never requested that OiNK be shut down, and had instead “sat and watched.”

Gazette Live reports that Stein went on to launch a scathing attack on the IFPI.

“They used this site. Their own members used this site to promote their own music and now they’re crushing him. Maybe he grew too big for them, maybe they’ve taken a different marketing approach. I don’t know. But it was decided that this site should be taken down.

“All of us here are being manipulated to some sort of marketing strategy by the IFPI. If anybody’s acting dishonestly it’s them,” he said.

At the end of the two week trial the jury returned a unanimous verdict (12 to 0). Alan Ellis is not guilty of Conspiracy to Defraud the music industry. He walked out of Teesside Crown Court a free man today, his name cleared.

The verdict cannot be appealed and Ellis can finally put the past behind him and move on.

@'Torrent Freak'

Scaling the Digital Wall in China

The Great Firewall of China is hardly impregnable.

Just as Mongol invaders could not be stopped by the Great Wall, Chinese citizens have found ways to circumvent the sophisticated Internet censorship systems designed to restrict them.

They are using a variety of tools to evade government filters and to reach the wide-open Web that the Chinese government deems dangerous — sites like YouTube, Facebook and, if Google makes good on its threat to withdraw from China, Google.cn.

It’s difficult to say precisely how many people in China engage in acts of digital disobedience. But college students in China and activists around the world say the number has been growing ever since the government stepped up efforts to “cleanse” the Web during the Beijing Olympics and the Communist regime’s 60th anniversary last year.

As part of that purge, the Chinese government shut down access to pornography sites, blogs, online video sites, Facebook, Twitter and more.

While only a small percentage of Chinese use these tools to sidestep government filters, the ease with which they can do it illustrates the difficulty any government faces in enforcing the type of strict censorship that was possible only a few years ago.

Jason Ng, a Chinese engineering school graduate who will say only that he works in the media business, wakes every day at 8:30 a.m., and then begins his virtual travels through an open, global network by fanqiang, or “scaling the wall.” He connects to an overseas computer with a link, called a proxy server, that he set up himself. It costs 15 renminbi, or around $2, a month to share with about two dozen other friends.

Mr. Ng then works on his blog and checks the news on Google Reader and Twitter to “officially start my day of information.” Chinese citizens engaged in such practices say the government rarely cracks down on them individually, preferring instead to go after prominent dissidents who publish information about forbidden topics online.

As a result, college students, human rights activists, bloggers, journalists and even multinational corporations in China are rushing to use tools that go over or around barriers set up by Chinese regulators, in part because they feel it is the only way to participate in a global online community.

Isaac Mao, a well-known blogger and activist in China, says the number of people seeking access to blocked sites has grown as more and more popular Web sites have been shut down by Beijing.

These digital dissidents have begun to organize small conferences and networks to share information and tricks about how to get access to banned material. “People start to hold a grudge against the government for depriving them of access to the Web sites they regularly visit,” Mr. Mao says.

But as the government has expanded its control over Internet, it has also intensified efforts to close some of the channels being used to evade the online blockade. The result has been a technological game of cat and mouse between the Chinese government and a global contingent fighting for online freedoms...

Continue reading

@'NY Times'

WARNING!!! Update re: Ultrareach

Founded by a group of successful entrepreneurs, renowned scientists and engineers in Silicon Valley who dedicated to providing technologies and service for people to exchange information on Internet freely and safely, UltraReach is the first company with a mission that offers Internet technology and service immune to the national Internet censorship in China.

Internet anti-censorship technology was thought of as "mission impossible" two years ago. We started thorough R&D on other existing technologies as well as from end users' perspective. While other existing technologies were developed for user's privacy and anonymity on Internet, we solved the connection and reconnection problem, which is the key issue for user to access web site without being blocked. Built on solid theoretical analysis and professional quality, UltraReach has successfully invented the technology platform called the GIFT system, which offers guaranteed connection and reconnection service to users inside these censor countries and capability of serving very large number of users with affordable resource. More than one year live service performance has proved that the GIFT technology has successfully broken through the so-called "Great Firewall" which is built with state-of-art firewall equipments and softwares with virtually unlimited resource from government.

Powered by GIFT technology, UltraReach.Net portal is the first home page for users to visit when they are connected to our service. Through the web portal users inside the censored zones can surf any public web sites in the free world. It naturally becomes a precious window for users inside China to look out for world news and other web contents that are blocked. The UltraReach.Net attracts thousands of users in China with daily news stories, featured articles and links from world media, governmental and non-governmental organizations, different groups and individual sites.

The outstanding performance of our service has made UltraReach Internet well known among the users who seek the Internet freedom in the censored country, and at the meantime attracted heavy attacks from Chinese Internet police. The GIFT system has survived various assaults including DNS hijacking, IP blocking, DOS attacking etc. We've taken the threats from the censor as opportunities to continuously improve the performance and reliability of our technology. In fact, the GIFT system has been mature enough for reliable service and it depends on the financial resource to expand its user base.

The next-level solution from UltraReach Internet as well as the real time performance has proved that our system and service is by far superior to other existing technologies. The main differentiators consist of anti-blocking power, connection and re-connection capability and the ability to serve and maintain a very large number of users from inside China. As the clear leader among the Internet anti-jamming technology and service providers, we are currently the only one that can offer reliable service to deliver web contents to the massive number of users in China.

HERE

My son did a bit of research into 'Ultrareach' and warning bells started to ring!

HERE

Cheech & Chong on Palin -"She answered a lot of questions like a stoner!"

Face of the day

He Pingping of China holds the hand of Sultan Kosen of Turkey as they attend the Guinness World Records Roadshow, on January 14, 2010 in Istanbul, Turkey. He, standing at 73 cm (2 feet 5 inch), and Kosen, at 246.5 cm (8 feet 1 inch), are both in the Guinness World Records for their statures. By Burak Kara/Getty Images.

@'Daily Dish'