Wednesday, 5 May 2010
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
Fuck Off Murdoch!!!
Though I left the UK in 1983 (I really could NOT stand Thatcher's socially divisive policies for a second longer!) Do not kid yourself that the Tories have changed. If Cameron gets elected I can forsee many policies being implemented that will hit the 'marginalised' members of the community most. You know the usual cuts to the drug and alcohol, mental health, homeless etc. sectors...
These toffs have NO idea what it is to be struggling and of course you really should pull up your socks, get on a bike etc, fugn etc...
After all it is all your own fault!
Secret Erik Prince/Blackwater Tape Exposed
Erik Prince, the reclusive owner of the Blackwater empire, rarely gives public speeches and when he does he attempts to ban journalists from attending and forbids recording or videotaping of his remarks. On May 5, that is exactly what Prince is trying to do when he speaks at DeVos Fieldhouse as the keynote speaker for the “Tulip Time Festival” in his hometown of Holland, Michigan. He told the event’s organizers no news reporting could be done on his speech and they consented to the ban. Journalists and media associations in Michigan are protesting this attempt to bar reporting on his remarks.
Despite Prince’s attempts to shield his speeches from public scrutiny, The Nation magazine has obtained an audio recording of a recent, private speech delivered by Prince to a friendly audience. The speech, which Prince attempted to keep from public consumption, provides a stunning glimpse into his views and future plans and reveals details of previously undisclosed activities of Blackwater. The people of the United States have a right to media coverage of events featuring the owner of a company that generates 90% of its revenue from the United States government.
In the speech, Prince proposed that the US government deploy armed private contractors to fight “terrorists” in Nigeria, Yemen, Somalia and Saudi Arabia, specifically to target Iranian influence. He expressed disdain for the Geneva Convention and described Blackwater’s secretive operations at four Forward Operating Bases he controls in Afghanistan. He called those fighting the US in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan “barbarians” who “crawled out of the sewer.” Prince also revealed details of a July 2009 operation he claims Blackwater forces coordinated in Afghanistan to take down a narcotrafficking facility, saying that Blackwater “call[ed] in multiple air strikes,” blowing up the facility. Prince boasted that his forces had carried out the “largest hashish bust in counter-narcotics history.” He characterized the work of some NATO countries’ forces in Afghanistan as ineffectual, suggesting that some coalition nations “should just pack it in and go home.” Prince spoke of Blackwater working in Pakistan, which appears to contradict the official, public Blackwater and US government line that Blackwater is not in Pakistan.
Prince also claimed that a Blackwater operative took down the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President George W Bush in Baghdad and criticized the Secret Service for being “flat-footed.” He bragged that Blackwater forces “beat the Louisiana National Guard to the scene” during Katrina and claimed that lawsuits, “tens of millions of dollars in lawyer bills” and political attacks prevented him from deploying a humanitarian ship that could have responded to the earthquake in Haiti or the tsunami that hit Indonesia.
Several times during the speech, Prince appeared to demean Afghans his company is training in Afghanistan, saying Blackwater had to teach them “Intro to Toilet Use” and to do jumping jacks. At the same time, he bragged that US generals told him the Afghans Blackwater trains “are the most effective fighting force in Afghanistan.” Prince also revealed that he is writing a book, scheduled to be released this fall.
The speech was delivered January 14 at the University of Michigan in front of an audience of entrepreneurs, ROTC commanders and cadets, businesspeople and military veterans. The speech was titled “Overcoming Adversity: Leadership at the Tip of the Spear” and was sponsored by the Young Presidents’ Association (YPO), a business networking association primarily made up of corporate executives. “Ripped from the headlines and described by Vanity Fair magazine, as a Tycoon, Contractor, Soldier and Spy, Erik Prince brings all that and more to our exclusive YPO speaking engagement,” read the event’s program, also obtained by The Nation. It proclaimed that Prince’s speech was an “amazing don’t miss opportunity from a man who has ‘been there and done that’ with a group of Cadets and Midshipmen who are months away from serving on the ‘tip of the spear.’"...
Continue reading
Jeremy Scahill @'Rebel Reports'
RapidShare Not Liable For Pirating Users, Court Rules
Like most file-hosting services, RapidShare carries a wide range of movies, music and software files that are distributed without the consent of the rightsholders. This situation has caused the company to be dragged to court several times already.One of the cases in which RapidShare lost was that against the movie rental company Capelight Pictures. This case was appealed by RapidShare and the Dusseldorf Court of Appeals overturned the earlier verdict yesterday, stating that the file-hoster is not responsible for any copyright infringements committed by its users.
“We are very happy about the judgment. The court has confirmed that RapidShare is not responsible for the contents of files uploaded by its users,” Rapidshare founder Christian Schmid said commenting to the outcome of the appeal.
“The judgment shows that attempts to denounce our business model as illegal will not be successful in the long run. With its 1-click-filehosting model, RapidShare responds to legitimate interests of its users and will continue to do so in the future,” Schmid added.
The arguments by the Court of Appeals go directly against earlier decisions in Germany where RapidShare was ordered to filter content proactively. The Court argued that RapidShare’s business is acting within the law and discounted the preventive measures that were suggested by the copyright holder.
Filtering based on keywords is not effective since that would result in many false positives, the Court noted. Likewise, manually reviewing uploaded content is not deemed feasible because RapidShare does not have the manpower to do this.
Another suggestion, banning file formats such as RARs, was also tossed out since this file type says little about whether a file is copyrighted or not. RAR is simply a format used to compress data, regardless of the copyrighted status of the files, the court explained.
The verdict is undoubtedly a major victory for RapidShare, and it will also reflect positively on other file-hosters and even torrent sites. In fact, many of the arguments used by the Court hold also for the average torrent site, as long as they stay away from other means of facilitating copyright infringement.
Ernesto @'Torrent Freak'
Obama FCC Expected to Abandon Net Neutrality, Universal Internet
On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that the Federal Communications Commission is expected to abandon its pledges to protect Net Neutrality and to ensure universal, affordable broadband. The story cites anonymous insiders confirming that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is "leaning toward" siding with the most powerful phone and cable lobbyists on a crucial decision: whether the FCC will have any authority to protect an open Internet and make it available to all.
It is a testament to the phone and cable industry's overwhelming influence that they seem to have convinced the nation's communications agency to swear off authority to protect Americans' right to open communications. But it is stunning that Genachowski would even contemplate allowing it to stand, given President Obama's repeated pledge to ensure fast, affordable, universal Internet broadband for every American.
So what's going on here?
In early April, a a federal appeals court ruled that, based on decisions by the Bush-era FCC, the agency lacks the authority to regulate broadband providers. In so doing, the court effectively handed control of the Internet to companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon -- allowing them to slow down or block any website, any blog post, any tweet, any outreach by a congressional campaign. The FCC no longer has the power to stop them.
So what's going on here?
In early April, a a federal appeals court ruled that, based on decisions by the Bush-era FCC, the agency lacks the authority to regulate broadband providers. In so doing, the court effectively handed control of the Internet to companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon -- allowing them to slow down or block any website, any blog post, any tweet, any outreach by a congressional campaign. The FCC no longer has the power to stop them.
Fortunately, the FCC does have the power to easily fix the problem by "reclassifying" broadband under the law. All it would take is a vote by its five commissioners -- and Genachowski already has the votes. But so far, he has done nothing, while proponents of Net Neutrality (the principle that prevents providers from indiscriminately blocking or slowing Internet content) have been watching and waiting with bated breath.
If Genachowski gives up on restoring FCC authority, you can be sure he will claim that Internet deployment remains the signature issue of his FCC and that he can still accomplish the goals outlined in the FCC's recently released National Broadband Plan.
If Genachowski gives up on restoring FCC authority, you can be sure he will claim that Internet deployment remains the signature issue of his FCC and that he can still accomplish the goals outlined in the FCC's recently released National Broadband Plan.
But unless the FCC puts broadband under what's called "Title II" of the Telecommunications Act, nearly every broadband-related decision the agency makes from here forward will be aggressively challenged in court, and the FCC will likely lose. The phone and cable companies know this, which is why they're going all out to keep the FCC from fixing the problem.
The goals of the much-feted National Broadband Plan are to ensure all Americans can get high-speed access to the open Internet -- not a closed version of the Internet that looks more like cable TV, where phone and cable companies decide what moves fast or not at all.
Chairman Genachowski could stand up for the American people, and against one of the biggest lobbying juggernauts in Washington, but it will take courage. If he fails to stand with the public, it could mean the end of the Internet as we know it.
Before it's too late, we need to make sure the FCC knows the American people are watching, and we will not sit quietly as the largest companies destroy the open, democratic Internet.
Josh Silver @'HuffPo'
Sasu Ripatti preps two full-lengths as Sistol
Multi-faceted Finnish producer Sasu Ripatti (AKA Vladislav Delay, Luomo, Uusitalo) will release two full-lengths this summer as Sistol, a guise that's lain dormant for over a decade.
Back in 1999, Ripatti released one self-titled techno record as Sistol, then gave up on the project indefinitely to focus on his other monikers. This July, Halo Cyon (a new sublabel of Phthalo) will release a remastered, two-disc version of Sistol, complete with remixes by Alva Noto, John Tejada, FaltyDL and [a]pendics.shuffle. This will be followed in August by a 12-inch and a new album, both entitled On the Bright Side, featuring all new tracks by Sistol.
"It's like getting back to an ex you were not in touch with for 10 years," Ripatti says of the new project (presumably in a good way). Chatting via email last week, he gave us the rest of the scoop on his resurrected pseudonym:
How would you characterize the sound of Sistol, as compared to Luomo, Uusitalo and Vladislav Delay?
Even though the sound is more bright and maybe somewhat less deep than what I have done I still think it's quite near to my sound, whatever that might be. Or at least an extension of it. It's more the process or the concept and definitely the inspirations behind Sistol that are different from other projects of mine. It's more straight-forward and less detailed, a little bit more rough or wild and also daring. More druggy than the other stuff, though some people might disagree with that.
Why didn't Sistol carry on like your other pseudonyms?
Early millennium I really got kind of fed up with the bass drum stuff and straight stuff. I went head first into experimental soundscapes and little later also to more pop-oriented dance floor stuff. Sistol just didn't have much room there for a long time. There has always been quite a lot of projects going on in parallel, so something had to give. Now I've stopped doing Luomo and Uusitalo at least for an indefinite amount of time and am also not doing anything under Vladislav Delay, instead concentrating on Sistol or completely new stuff.
What can expect from Sistol in terms of live performance?
I will try to really take a challenge to do live and improvised club sets which I haven't ever done before. Technically I haven't yet even decided what I'm going to use, that's one of the next things I need to concentrate on.
Tracklisting
Sistol
CD1: Remastered Reissue
01. Hajotus
02. Keno
03. Hac
04. Haaska
05. Kelmi
06. Luomo
07. Kotka
08. Kojo
CD2: Remakes/Remixes
01. Hac (Alva Noto Remodel)
02. Kotka (FaltyDL Refunk)
03. Kojo (John Tejada Remix)
04. Keno (Mike Huckaby S Y N T H Remix)
05. Haaska (Swelter Mix by [a]pendics.shuffle)
06. Kotka (Sutekh Parabolai Mix)
07. Hajotus (Duran Duran Duran DDD remix)
08. Keno (Somatic Responses SW Mix)
09. Nuomo (Ed Flis mix)
10. Nuomo (Ike Yard’s Metalli Tulitta)
On the Bright Side
01. (Permission to) Avalanche
02. Hospital Husband
03. On the Bright Side
04. A Better Shore
05. Fucked-Up Novelty
06. Contaminate Her
07. Glowing and so Spread
08. Funseeker
Halo Cyon will release Sistol (Remasters & Remakes) on July 27th, and On the Bright Side on August 24th, 2010.
@'RA'
Armando Iannucci: The Duffy affair turned the media into a pack of shrieking gibbons
Every election has its FFS moment. That's the point when normal politics is disrupted by an event so stupid it makes me swear at the telly a lot. The FFS moment is usually something that's got nothing to do with the issues and everything to do with the media being so bored that they suddenly get very very excited indeed over something like Labour's Party Political Broadcast about Jennifer's ear in 1992 (remember that?) or John Prescott thumping someone for having the audacity to wear a mullet in 2002. These moments when they happen are often described as the "defining" moment of the campaign, generate a lot of headlines and then go on to have no influence on the eventual outcome whatsoever.
I thought this election was going to be different. The seriousness of the financial meltdown that is its background noise, coupled with the dominant and obviously historic position of the live televised debates within it, seemed to be enough to feed the media beast. The closeness in the polls, and Clegg's sudden rise to the role of Kingmaker Apparent (remember that?) was all the excitement we needed.
Then came Gordon Brown's Gillian Duffy moment, and suddenly all bets were off; history was being made, a gargantuan chapter in Britain's story was being written – and every journalist worth his or her salt was being rushed to Rochdale with a live satellite feed and enough throat lozenges to keep them shouting all through the night on live television.
As the gleeful camera pointed live at Mrs Duffy's door while the PM held his economic summit with her, I slumped down in despair at the biggest FFS moment of the past 20 years. Once again, all those questions we need answering but which have never been answered, culminating in the One Big Question – "What The Hell Are You All Going To Cut?" – were thrown away and ignored as the Fourth Estate hopped about like dyspeptic monkeys gleefully reporting the non-existent facts as they unfolded.
As someone who, in The Thick of It, has contrived several silly political moments like these, I appeared to be on a few insiders' contact lists, but there was something rather childish about the mobful of exultant voicemail messages left by hyper-ventilating journalists on my mobile, as BBC news programmes, daily newspapers, and Sky journos asked me to "do" a quick response to these events.
The journalist from Sky News was in some kind of hysterical state of tumescence as he cackled "Gordon Brown's done a gaffe and we wondered if you'd come on to respond. You've got to see it!" on my answering service, and I'm sorry I deleted it rather than release it in to the public domain. The BBC was no less sensationalist in its pokey recording of Brown sitting listening to his own surreptitiously recorded voice played back to him.
It's at these moments that you stand back and see, not a nation debating its future, but a pack of shrieking gibbons.
Thankfully, though, Bigotgate seems to have had no impact on the polls. This has restored my faith in this election as a sober, sincere and considered affair, though it's shed a light on what the media machine can do when it's taken too much Red Bull. But the electorate has come out of it beaming with integrity. I know at the end of each debate, politicians tend to say "The real winner tonight is the British public". Taken to its logical conclusion this means the British public won all three debates, which probably qualifies us for Europe where we take on the French public in the final. But, joking aside, I can't help feeling that's been true in the end, and that the public has played a blinder this election.
We asked big questions, we got annoyed they weren't being answered, we allowed another guy to have his say and thought he was decent enough to be given serious consideration, we said we didn't like negative campaigning and made sure it stopped, we roared with mockery when old-fashioned sleazy headlines were brought out on the nation's front pages, and we quite simply refused to be bought with easy promises, fancy slogans or cheap bribes. If the public were up for election this time round, I'd vote for them, and that's not necessarily something I would have felt like doing in the past.
After all that, it's probably ungainly and possibly a bit rude of me to say who I will actually be voting for but, along with this paper, I have absolutely no fear and a lot of hope that a hung parliament would actually knock some sense into a political system whose iniquities, brutalities and downright inefficiencies have provided the only negative noises of the past four weeks.
Personally, I think as big a Liberal Democrat vote as possible is the best way to get this, but I can understand that, if you live in a tight Lab/Con constituency, you might want to do something different. The websites progressiveparliament.org.uk and voteforachange.co.uk advise you on the best way of achieving a hung parliament from your constituency.
But, honestly, don't listen to me. I'm part of the media, so what do I know? You, the public, have set the agenda this time round, so listen to your heart and head. Above all, go and vote. And enjoy all the attention.
The Life and Crimes of Lenny Bruce
A jewel from the archives. My friend Steve Shepherd used to be a radio producer - producing Jez Nelson's Jazz on 3 for years. His first programme, though, made in 1996, was this documentary about Lenny Bruce, made for the Sunday Feature slot - also on Radio - 3 in 1996. It's narrated by rock critic legend Charles Shaar Murray and The Guardian, at the time, said
"You almost hear the smoke above the jazz and the jokes. Sad and very funny. And proof that it can be cool to listen to Radio 3?"
So here is Steve's show (MP3).
- The picture is a publicity still supplied to Steve by Lenny's record label when he started on the project.
U.S. Seeks Man From Pakistan Tied to S.U.V. in Bomb Case
Federal authorities have identified the man who recently bought the 1993 Nissan Pathfinder that was rigged to explode in Times Square as a naturalized United States citizen from Pakistan who recently returned from a trip there, and were seeking to arrest him on Monday night, according to several people briefed on the investigation.
The man, a Connecticut resident who was not publicly identified, bought the sport utility vehicle in Bridgeport, within the last three weeks, paying cash in a deal that involved no formal paperwork.
The vehicle was discovered about 6:30 p.m. on Saturday on West 45th Street near Seventh Avenue, parked at an angle with its engine running and hazard lights on, as theatergoers tucked into preshow dinners. Sharp-eyed street vendors noticed smoke coming from the Pathfinder and flagged down a police officer. The police bomb squad found the makings of a car bomb: gasoline, propane, fireworks, fertilizer, wiring and alarm clocks.
Investigators who were tracking the man were also exploring whether he or others who might have been involved in the attempted bombing had been in contact with people or groups overseas, according to federal officials. The investigation was shifted on Monday to the control of the international terrorism branch of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, a multiagency group led by the Justice Department, according to two officials.
Officials cautioned that the investigation of possible international contacts did not mean there was a connection to a known terrorist group, but they said they were exploring all possibilities.
“It’s a prominent lead that they’re following, the international association,” said a senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing investigation. “But there’s still a lot of information being gathered.”
On Monday, there was a sweeping response to the attempted attack in the tourist-packed city-within-a-city of Times Square — including an increased police presence, vehicle inspections and a touch of panic from veteran New Yorkers when a manhole fire flared five blocks from the scene of the failed bombing. Consolidated Edison blamed faulty wiring for the fire.
The recent sale of the Pathfinder began online. An advertisement that appears to be for the vehicle, which had 141,000 miles on the odometer and was listed for sale at $1,300 on at least two Web sites, emphasized that it was in good condition — “CLEAN inside and out!!” — with a recently repaired alternator and a new gas pump, distributor and front tires. “It does have some rust as you can see in the picture,” the seller allowed on NothingButCars.net, “but other than that, it runs great.” The other advertisement appeared on Craigslist.
In Bridgeport, the seller refused to answer questions. “You can’t interview her,” said an unidentified man at the woman’s two-story, white clapboard house. “She already talked to the F.B.I.”
The police continued sifting through footage from 82 city cameras mounted from 34th Street to 51st Street between Avenue of the Americas and Eighth Avenue, and from untold number of business and tourist cameras.
But investigators appeared to have begun to assign less significance to a man who appeared to be in his 40s who was seen on one video. That man was seen walking away from the area where the Pathfinder was parked and through Shubert Alley, which runs between 44th and 45th Streets. He looked over his shoulder at least twice and pulled off a shirt, revealing a red T-shirt underneath.
The New York police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, said investigators still wanted to speak to that man, but acknowledged that he might not be connected to the failed bombing. Paul J. Browne, the department’s top spokesman, said the police had stopped looking for additional video in the area that might have tracked the man’s movements.
“It may turn out that he was just somebody in the area, but not connected with the car bomb,” Mr. Browne said.
The police, though, said they might release footage of a man running north on Broadway at the time that a fire broke out in the Pathfinder, Mr. Kelly said.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. seemed optimistic in comments he made Monday morning. “I think that we have made really substantial progress,” he told reporters in Washington. “We have some good leads.”
The materials found in the Pathfinder were to be sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s laboratory in Quantico, Va., for analysis, the police said. “They’ve got the top laboratory in the world to do these sorts of examinations, and we’ll keep some samples here,” Mr. Kelly said.
Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, said on the “Today” show on NBC that it was premature to label any person or group as suspect. “Right now, every lead has to be pursued,” she said. “I caution against premature decisions one way or the other.” But the White House made clear that it considered the effort an act of terrorism, whoever its authors were. “I think anybody that has the type of material that they had in a car in Times Square, I would say that that was intended to terrorize, absolutely,” said the White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs.
U.S. Lawmakers Prepare Online Privacy Rules
.
United States lawmakers have spent a year preparing draft legislation for a law that would define and limit privacy for advertisers and Internet companies. The legislation will govern methods of taking information from users online and using that information to target advertisements to them. On Tuesday, they will present the draft legislation.
The timing is good for such an announcement given the worry over, among other things, Facebook's recent changes that have caused fresh worry over privacy.
According to the Wall Street Journal, two of the representatives working on the bill, Rick Boucher (D-VA) and Cliff Stearns (R-FL) are posting the bill on their websites Tuesday. The plan is to accept feedback from readers for two months, then revise and submit it.
Elements of the draft include the following:
- Disclosure of what information is collected and how, how it is used and who it is shared with
- Opt-outs for consumers.
- Restrictions on collecting financial, medical, government ID information and that of children
Curt Hopkins @'ReadWriteWeb'
Playing with fire!
You could take the bag of unused candles your aunt left you to prepare a wonderfully romantic moment with your loved one. Or you could relive your Dungeons & Dragons years and play the fire illusionist. The choice is yours.
Plants soon to be considered source of global warming...
More info for the climate deniers to confuse. Seems like the more we learn, the less chance we have of being able to turn things around. I live in a clearcutting country, to my great shame, and even though the consequences on animal habitat are self-evident, the climate issue is news to me.
Trees and other plants help keep the planet cool, but rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are turning down this global air conditioner. According to a new study by researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science, in some regions more than a quarter of the warming from increased carbon dioxide is due to its direct impact on vegetation. This warming is in addition to carbon dioxide's better-known effect as a heat-trapping greenhouse gas. For scientists trying to predict global climate change in the coming century, the study underscores the importance of including plants in their climate models.
"Plants have a very complex and diverse influence on the climate system," says study co-author Ken Caldeira of Carnegie's Department of Global Ecology. "Plants take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, but they also have other effects, such as changing the amount of evaporation from the land surface. It's impossible to make good climate predictions without taking all of these factors into account."
Plants give off water through tiny pores in their leaves, a process called evapotranspiration that cools the plant, just as perspiration cools our bodies. On a hot day, a tree can release tens of gallons of water into the air, acting as a natural air conditioner for its surroundings. The plants absorb carbon dioxide for photosynthesis through the same pores (called stomata). But when carbon dioxide levels are high, the leaf pores shrink. This causes less water to be released, diminishing the tree's cooling power.
More @'ScienceBlogs'
Monday, 3 May 2010
Chris Carter - 'This Train' & 'While Waiting'
This track was recorded on a bed, in my hotel room, while on a trip to Leicester to perform at the first Dirty-Carter event. It's just me improvising using some of the gear and some sounds I would later use for the Dirty-Carter performance. The voice and ambience is from a nearby train station and was recorded out of the hotel window and played back on my iPhone. The inclusion of the Tannoy station announcements was partly inspired by listening to 'Music For Real Airports' on the journey to Leicester.
Equipment used:
a regular Kaossilator, a circuit-bent Kaossilator, two mini Kaoss pads, a Tom Bugs WOM micro synth, a Chimera BC8 micro synth, two Zoom PFX-9003 effects, a Boss DSD-2 sampler/delay, a Dirty-Carter E.S.G.I, an iPhone for field recording playback, portable Edirol mixer and a Zoom H2 recorder. No laptops or desktop computers were used in the recording.
This is the second track I recorded on a bed, in my hotel room, while on a trip to Leicester to perform at the first Dirty-Carter event. It's just me improvising using some of the gear and some sounds I would later use for the Dirty-Carter performance with some low level looping courtesy of my iPhone.
Equipment used:
a regular Kaossilator, a circuit-bent Kaossilator, two mini Kaoss pads, a Tom Bugs WOM micro synth, a Chimera BC8 micro synth, two Zoom PFX-9003 effects, a Boss DSD-2 sampler/delay, a Dirty-Carter E.S.G.I, an iPhone for loop playback, portable Edirol mixer and a Zoom H2 recorder. No laptops or desktop computers were used in the recording.
A photo of a set-up similar to what I used can be viewed here:
Released by: CTI
Release date: Apr 28, 2010
A Must Read: What Happened When I Went Undercover at a Christian Gay-to-Straight Conversion Camp
"My weekend was filled with crying, singing, and wrestling, as 30 men struggled to overcome their attraction to other men. It was also the first time I felt another man's erection."
Ted Cox @'AlterNet'
BTW
Congrats to Shaun Micallef!
A number of years ago on Micallef Tonight there was the funniest line I have ever heard on TV
(and there was not one laugh from the studio audience!!!)
'The castrati spoke very highly of him!'
Still makes me piss myself laughing...
Toki Wright - By The Time I Get To Arizona (2010 Reduex)
Toki Wright has breathed new life into Public Enemy's timeless anthem "By The Time I Get To Arizona." This new version was created in response to a bill signed into law in the state of Arizona that states “all immigrants must carry documentation verifying their immigration status." Police officers now have the authority to ask to see the information from any individual that is deemed “suspicious." Essentially, a bill that legalizes racial profiling: if you look like an immigrant, you can be hauled off to jail. Toki's scathing indictment pays due respect to the original classic, once again turning hip-hop into the true "CNN of the people."
5 Actions You Can Take Against SB 1070
Chris Morris: 'Bin Laden doesn't really do jokes'
Morris, on set making his new film Four Lions, says his approach is all about 'big thinking in small places – it's a fairly standard comic position'
Two men sit shoulder-to-shoulder against a bright white wall. They are young and cheerful, at ease in each other's company. They clown around, try a hat on for size and direct dopey grins at the camera. The prevailing mood is one of jollity, and yet what we are witnessing are the rushes from a martyrdom video, shot at Osama bin Laden's farmhouse in January 2000. The man on the right is Mohamed Atta, ringleader of the 11 September hijackers. His buddy on the left is Ziad Jarrah, who piloted the United 93 flight that came down in a Pennsylvania cornfield, killing everyone on board.
Fast-forward a decade. Chris Morris and I are sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in a London production office, staring at the screen of a scuffed white laptop. "It doesn't conform to type, does it?" Morris says. "These aren't cold, reptilian killers. They're dicking about with a hat; they're pissing themselves laughing. What's interesting is to look at this footage and think, 'But they still did it.' They acted like this, and then they still went and did it. And if you keep going with that line of thought, you might get somewhere and come out the other side." He shrugs. "Or maybe you just get lost and go completely mad."
Morris has spent the past five years researching, scripting, shooting and editing a comedy about suicide bombers. He has gone with it, got through it and come out the other side, and if he's gone mad in the process, it is sometimes hard to tell. In the course of a chaotic three-day spell, I run into the director on several occasions and he's different every time; by turns bouncy and ebullient, caustic and contemptuous, professional and forthright. At each turn in the conversation, I think I catch glimmers of the myriad media ghouls he once channelled on the likes of Brass Eye and The Day Today. Then again, maybe not. Morris suggests that his days of deconstructing the antics of the fourth estate are now behind him. He has grown up, moved on. Right now, he has other fish to fry.
Four Lions is a bumbling picaresque about a quartet of would-be jihadis who hatch a plot to bomb the London Marathon. It introduces us to jittery Omar (played by Riz Ahmed), dozy Faisal (Adeel Akhtar), foursquare Waj (Kayvan Novak) and belligerent Barry (Nigel Lindsay), while an inept rapper named Hassan (Arsher Ali) jogs on the sidelines, awaiting his big chance. The film's early scenes set up the jihadis as a bunch of Dad's Army-style buffoons – hapless, misguided, even faintly lovable. Then, about midway through, one of them runs through a field, stumbles over a wall and blows himself up (Asian Man's Head Falls Out Of Tree, proclaims the headline in the next day's paper). After that, we twig that this gentle, domestic excursion is actually tilting towards oblivion. And this, surely, is the point of Four Lions. It is a film on a knife edge, one that pits the inherent humour of its situation against the inherent horror of its subject matter.
"Big thinking in small places," agrees its director. "It's a fairly standard comic position." In person, Morris is lithe and limber, with a corkscrew bouffant and a birthmark on his cheek that the tabloids have chosen to read as the mark of Cain, physical proof of an evil nature. If so, it seems to agree with him. Morris is now in his late 40s, though he seems preternaturally boyish – more youthful, somehow, than the Paxman-esque news anchor he first road-tested on the BBC back in 1994.
He explains that he was first drawn to the idea of suicide bombers after completing work on his infamous Brass Eye paedophile special from 2001. The research, he says, predated the London bombings of 7 July 2005. "It was an attempt to figure it out, to ask, 'What's going on with this?' This [the "War on Terror"] is something that's commanding so much of our lives, shaping so much of our culture, turning this massive political wheel. I was wondering what this new game was all about. But then 7/7 hit that with a fairly large impact, in that we were suddenly seeing all these guys with a Hovis accent. Suddenly you're not dealing with an amorphous Arab world so much as with British people who have been here quite a long time and who make curry and are a part of the landscape. So you've got a double excavation going on."
And what conclusions did he draw? It strikes me that modern jihad (or at least the version that we see in Four Lions) says as much about the west as it does about the east. It's an unholy hybrid, isn't it? Fundamentalist zeal by way of Fame Academy.
"Well, it could be," Morris says, though he is not wholly convinced. "There are a lot of theories, all partly right. You could argue that this is a version of celebrity culture gone wrong. There's certainly a Live Aid element to it." He smiles. "I'm not saying that Diana was the perfect suicide bomber. But there are some parallels, I think."
I first spoke to Morris about seven years ago, when he granted a brief phone interview to promote his Bafta-winning short film My Wrongs 8245-8249 & 117. At the time, I presumptuously suggested that the ongoing War on Terror seemed tailor-made for a Brass Eye special. Except he was having none of it. There was no mileage in the idea, he sniffed. He didn't know what could be done with it.
Today, he qualifies that position. OK, he was interested, even back then. It's just that the Brass Eye approach had begun to bore him. "You can only maintain your interest if you're travelling more in ignorance than knowledge. I did formalise some ideas, but the jokes were all concerned with media coverage and perception, rather than the issue itself. And when you've already had a crack at media language, you can only do it a few times before you know how it works."
He thinks it through. "It's an age thing as well. You see young people, or kids, and they're fascinated by the way people talk. And that's great. But eventually you get to the point where you think, 'You know what? I don't care how you talk, I'm just listening to what you're saying.' "
All of which makes Brass Eye sound like an inspired piece of juvenilia. "Well, maybe," he says. "And, of course, there's a place for looking at the language. How can you wage a war on terror? How can you declare war on an abstract noun? But the danger is that then you're ignoring the most interesting thing about it. This is such a life-or-death issue that just looking at the language would be a cop-out. You want to find out what's behind the rhetoric. You need to look at the engine."
So Morris pushed his satire in a fresh direction and plunged himself into years of detailed research. He sifted through court transcripts, interviewed experts (and idiots) in the field, and came away with a stash of anecdotes that sound at least halfway as hilarious as anything that appears in the finished film. He tells me about the BNP hard man who "accidentally converted himself" after reading the Qur'an; about the fundamentalist who demanded that the world be run under a caliphate, yet freely admitted that he was unable to apply Sharia law in his own home because his wife wouldn't let him.
(LMAO-Mona)
Some of his subjects, he adds, were really rather funny. "The thing about a sense of humour is that it's not bestowed on the good. It's just randomly dished out. People say that Abu Hamza is very good at jokes. Admittedly, Bin Laden doesn't really do jokes. Maybe that's because his writers are no good, or his sense of humour is too dry for western tastes." He sighs. "Certainly he's no worse than Gordon Brown."
(LMAO-Mona)
Some of his subjects, he adds, were really rather funny. "The thing about a sense of humour is that it's not bestowed on the good. It's just randomly dished out. People say that Abu Hamza is very good at jokes. Admittedly, Bin Laden doesn't really do jokes. Maybe that's because his writers are no good, or his sense of humour is too dry for western tastes." He sighs. "Certainly he's no worse than Gordon Brown."
The homework has paid handsome dividends. Four Lions is a good film, both audacious and insightful. But it is also – and there's no easy way to gloss this – a potentially hazardous one. I ask if Morris is concerned about possible reprisals, and he umms and ahhs. Yes, he was nervous about previewing it at the Sundance film festival, and then again in Bradford, but so far the response has been positive. If anything, he is more concerned with upsetting those who were caught up in 7/7, except that he has spoken to someone who was on one of the tube trains and they claimed to be OK with the idea, "so long as it's funny". Besides, he adds, there is no way of making a film that's 100% fatwa-proof. During his early days as a radio DJ, he once bungled a request, played Tony Bennett instead of Frank Sinatra, and went on to receive lurid death threats from a listener in King's Lynn. Who can tell what people will react to?
To his detractors, Morris remains a malign and shadowy hoaxer; a hit-and-run media terrorist whose dislike of the limelight is taken as cowardice. Away from the cameras, he lives quietly with his wife, literary agent Jo Unwin, and their two young sons. He rarely attends public events and almost never gives interviews which, inevitably, only fuels the mystique. When embarking on Four Lions, he corralled the services of two co-writers, Peep Show creators Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain. For them, part of the appeal was the chance to meet Morris in the flesh. "We wanted to check he really existed," Bain tells me. "He has this reputation as the dark lord of comedy, this godlike presence. It was a surprise to find that he's actually human."
Morris has insisted that he never deliberately courts controversy; that there's no purpose in tackling a subject if your sole aim is to shock. That said, it seems clear that his compass is naturally pointed towards the thorny and the taboo. I keep coming back to that paedophile special, in which a series of duped celebrities lined up to talk "Nonce Sense" and earnestly explain that you can tell when your child had been abused because they "smell like hammers". Of course, what Morris was lampooning was the media's collective hysteria about paedophilia, as opposed to paedophilia itself. But no matter. The show sparked a perfect storm of tabloid outrage. The Daily Mail dubbed Morris "the most loathed man on TV", while 2,000 viewers (or possibly non-viewers) rang up to lodge a complaint with Channel 4.
And what was Morris's reaction to all of this? Was there, perhaps, a part of him that relished the attention? "I didn't relish it," he says quietly. "What happened was that I'd gone on holiday. I'd gone on holiday by mistake, in relation to the transmission time. Channel 4 had bumped [Brass Eye] by three weeks because there was a girl who had gone missing on a school trip in France, so it coincided with my holiday and I flew right back into the storm." Another shrug. "It sounds dismissive, but it was actually pretty boring. It wasn't particularly novel."
It wasn't novel, being the subject of a witch-hunt? "But it wasn't a witch-hunt. It all seemed to happen in a fictional world. I mean, if I'd gone on the tube and been menaced by a lot of angry people, then it wouldn't have been boring and it wouldn't have been pleasant. But stuff that's going on in the papers when you've just done a show about stuff that's going on in the papers is just" – he grins – "stuff that's going on in the papers."
Interview over, Morris reboots his laptop, guides me past various folders ("Asian Girls Names") and shows off some exclusive Four Lions off-cuts. En route, he name-checks the films he used as touchstones. He thought of The Ladykillers, The Guns Of Navarone and a thriller by Gillo Pontecorvo called Operation Ogro, about a true-life band of Basque separatists ("Like this, but without the jokes"). Now look, here's some behind-the-scenes footage, interspersed with multiple takes of key sequences. His work is now over, but he seems loth to let it go. "Did you know that Terrence Malick is still working on The Thin Red Line? Ten years after it was released in the cinema." How typical of Morris, to set his stall beside another famous recluse, another man who prefers to toil in the shadows and let his work speak for itself.
On screen, Omar is squabbling with Barry. This, Morris explains, is an exchange that failed to make the final cut because it was seen as being too obvious, too explicit; too much thought and not enough joke. "Sometimes you got to do the wrong thing in order to do the right thing!" Omar is screaming. "Sometimes the wrong thing's more right than the right thing!"
I leave with the suspicion that I've just witnessed the moment that best sums up the comedic intent behind Four Lions. Perhaps it says something about the man who made it, too.
Xan Brooks @'The Guardian'
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