davidsteven David Steven
The irony of the CIA benefiting from sharia law #raymonddavis #pakistan
CIA man free after 'blood money' payment
CIA man free after 'blood money' payment
via
Aidan
5 hours ago
Wednesday, 16 March 2011
exiledsurfer exiledsurfer
#USDOR http://bit.ly/i5JbrB I am tired of orange jumpsuits being the new black, and the designers who made them fashionable.
Interview: David Johansen
What wasn’t inevitable was how good the comeback was. While not on par with the raunchy snarl of the Dolls’ pair of classic studio albums from the early ’70s, the new disc, One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This, was a respectable addition to the catalog of a band that always prided itself on disrespectability. Johansen and Sylvain reconnected with Todd Rundgren, the producer of the Dolls’ 1973 debut, for 2007’s Cause I Sez So, another raw batch of retro-rock that was hastily written, quickly recorded, and sounds like it—in other words, it’s an exhibition of the kind of trashy urgency that made the Dolls so revolutionary in the first place.
But with the group’s third post-reunion album—and fifth overall—Dancing Backward In High Heels, Johansen takes a different direction. With the help of Jason Hill (former frontman of Louis XIV and best known for his production work for The Killers), Dancing Backward is a shimmery, reverb-soaked album that evokes just about every era of Johansen’s career—not to mention ’60s girl groups and a reworked version of the disco-ish “Funky But Chic,” originally released on his self-titled 1978 solo debut. But as Johansen tells The A.V. Club, looking to the past is something that’s as painful as it is inescapable—not to mention occasionally funny...
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Jason Heller @'A.V. Club'
Benkler argues against prosecution of WikiLeaks, detailing government and news media "overreaction"
Benkler, the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center, argues that WikiLeaks’ freedom of expression is protected by the First Amendment and should not be treated differently from that of traditional news media. A working draft of his article, which will be published in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, can be found here.
Below, Benkler answers questions from June Wu for the publication Harvard Law Today.
Q: What did you set out to investigate?
A: The article essentially does two things. The first is to explain why WikiLeaks is essentially the Pentagon Papers case of the 21st century: a core journalistic release of material coming under attack. As a matter of First Amendment limitations, you can’t distinguish Wikileaks from the New York Times along any dimension that is constitutionally relevant. The second is to offer a case study of the difficult but important relationship between the new, networked media and traditional media that is coming to characterize the new media environment.
Q: How would you describe government and media response to WikiLeaks?
A: I think once you actually look at the facts carefully, the government and media vastly overreacted and overstated dramatically the extent of the actual threat of WikiLeaks. One of the things I did was an analysis of all the news stories at the time of the embassy cables release. About two-thirds of news reports in the U.S. in the first two weeks explicitly misstated what WikiLeaks had released and claimed that hundreds of thousands of cables had been dumped online at a time that only a few hundred cables had been released, in redacted form, and only after they were already published by one of the traditional newspaper partners in the endeavor. The pattern of misreporting in the news media fit the pattern of overstatement by government actors, both administration officials and senators.
Q: What is your primary criticism of the government and media overreaction?
A: It fed into a description of WikiLeaks as though it was some terrorist organization as opposed to what it is, which is, in fact, a journalistic enterprise. Joe Biden responded to the release of the embassy cables by stating that WikiLeaders founder Julian Assange is “more like a high-tech terrorist than the Pentagon Papers.” That captured the overstated, overheated, irresponsible nature of the public and political response to what was fundamentally a moment of journalistic disclosure. They responded as if it were a security threat, in a way that was simply inconsistent with a democratic American administration. This, in turn, set the background for the denial of service attacks by the commercial providers of services to Wikileaks: Amazon, EveryDNS, Mastercard, Visa, etc.
Q: What are the main implications of your findings?
A: The direct implication is the U.S. should take a look at this investigation and declare that the Constitution’s First Amendment simply does not permit prosecution of WikiLeaks. It is not, as a matter of law, sustainable to treat WikiLeaks or Assange any differently than the New York Times and its reporters.
The second implication is that we need a reformed legal regime, which is what I start to look at in the paper. A system that depends on privately-owned critical communications systems and privately-run payment systems owned by companies eager to avoid public controversy is an easy target for government trying to shut it down. We need to develop much more robust legal responsibility for private operators of critical infrastructures so they will have a backbone when the government or negative public opinion says you have to shut it down. We need to create a framework in which they instead have to say, we have a legal responsibility to not discriminate against users based on fact that they are unpopular speakers. We have a lot of work to do in this area.
The third piece is more about the future of journalism. Already, we are seeing today a much more global, much more diverse media environment that includes a wide range of actors. If we want to understand the future of journalism, we need to look at the whole integrated system. We can’t keep looking at it through a prism of traditional American media.
Q. How is WikiLeaks a journalistic organization?
A: There are multiple functions that go into journalism: identify sources, review material, preserve anonymity of sources at some points, and choreograph the release of information. WikiLeaks is not a traditional media organization, but essentially over course of the year, WikiLeaks was learning how to participate in a joint venture with a number of other traditional news organizations in order to achieve exactly that—finding sources, getting information, structuring it in a way that is usable, and integrating with other organizations to achieve release. That’s journalism.
@'Harvard Law School'
Julian Assange tells students that the web is the greatest spying machine ever
Assange acknowledged that the web could allow greater government transparency and better co-operation between activists, but said it gave authorities their best ever opportunity to monitor and catch dissidents.
"While the internet has in some ways an ability to let us know to an unprecedented level what government is doing, and to let us co-operate with each other to hold repressive governments and repressive corporations to account, it is also the greatest spying machine the world has ever seen," he told students at Cambridge University. Hundreds queued for hours to attend.
He continued: "It [the web] is not a technology that favours freedom of speech. It is not a technology that favours human rights. It is not a technology that favours civil life. Rather it is a technology that can be used to set up a totalitarian spying regime, the likes of which we have never seen. Or, on the other hand, taken by us, taken by activists, and taken by all those who want a different trajectory for the technological world, it can be something we all hope for."
Assange also suggested that Facebook and Twitter played less of a role in the unrest in the Middle East than has previously been argued by social media commentators and politicians.
He said: "Yes [Twitter and Facebook] did play a part, although not nearly as large a part as al-Jazeera. But the guide produced by Egyptian revolutionaries … says on the first page, 'Do not use Facebook and Twitter', and says on the last page, 'Do not use Facebook and Twitter'.
"There is a reason for that. There was actually a Facebook revolt in Cairo three or four years ago. It was very small … after it, Facebook was used to round-up all the principal participants. They were then beaten, interrogated and incarcerated."
Assange said that cables released by WikiLeaks played a key role in both fomenting unrest in the Middle East and forcing the US government not to back former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.
Assange said diplomatic cables concerning US attitudes to the former Tunisian regime had given strength to revolutionary forces across the region.
"The Tunisian cables showed clearly that if it came down to it, the US, if it came down to a fight between the military on the one hand, and Ben Ali's political regime on the other, the US would probably support the military."
He continued: "That is something that must have also caused neighbouring countries to Tunisia some thought: that is that if they militarily intervened, they may not be on the same side as the United States."
Assange, who is appealing against his extradition to Sweden on alleged sex charges, said the WikiLeaks releases had also forced the US to drop their tacit support of Mubarak.
"As a result of releasing cables about Suleiman [the vice-president of Egypt under Mubarak], the US and Israel's preferred option for regime takeover in Egypt, as a result of releasing cables about Mubarak's approval of Suleiman's torture methods, it was not possible for Joseph Biden to [repeat his earlier claim that Mubarak was not a dictator]. It was not possible for Hillary Clinton to publicly come out and support Mubarak's regime."
Responding to a question about Bradley Manning, the US soldier incarcerated for allegedly leaking classified information, Assange said: "We have no idea whether he is one of our sources. All our technology is geared up to make sure we have no idea."
He expressed sympathy for Manning. "He is in a terrible situation. And if he is not connected to us, [then] he is there as an innocent … and if he is in some manner connected to our publications, then of course we have some responsibility. That said, there is no allegation that he was arrested as the result of anything to do with us. The allegation is that he was arrested as a result of him speaking to Wired magazine in the United States."
Assange also criticised the New York Times, which he claimed had suppressed stories about secret American military activity in Afghanistan.
Patrick Kingsley @'The Guardian'
DJ Smiley Culture Dies In Drugs Raid
The Independent Police Complaints Commission has launched an investigation, after the incident was voluntarily reported to it by Scotland Yard.
Officers from the Metropolitan Police had called at his home in Warlingham, Surrey, as part of a series of raids during a drugs investigation.
It is believed he died in the kitchen of the house after police tried to resuscitate him.
Surrey police were called to the house during the incident.
It is understood other suspects were arrested at other addresses during the series of raids.
Smiley Culture had a short burst of fame in the 1980s with singles Cockney Translation and Police Officer which both reached the singles charts and led to appearances on BBC's Top Of The Pops.
As his pop career diminished he turned to acting, with a cameo appearance in the film Absolute Beginners.
In September last year he was charged with conspiracy to supply cocaine and appeared at Croydon Magistrates' Court.
@'Sky'
David Emmanuel aka Smiley Culture 1963-2011
The Strokes – Angles (2011 - Albumstream)
Tracklist:
01 – Machu Picchu
02 – Under Cover Of Darkness
03 – Two Kinds Of Happiness
04 – You’re So Right
05 – Taken For A Fool
06 – Games
07 – Call Me Back
08 – Gratisfaction
09 – Metabolism
10 – Life Is Simple In The Moonlight
ALBUMSTREAM
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
Burial, Four Tet and Thom Yorke split new limited 12″ single
No details are given except for the fact it’s black label, housed in a plain black bag. The A-side is by Burial, and called ‘Ego’, the B-side is a Four Tet and Thom Yorke collaboration titled ‘Mirror’. We presume this will sell out very, very quickly, so if you want one then act sharp. Expected release date is March 21, via Four Tet’s Text label.
Via
Bahrain king declares state of emergency after protests
The king of Bahrain has declared a state of emergency, due to start immediately and which will last for three months, state TV has reported.
The announcement follows weeks of unrest in the kingdom.The nation's armed forces chief has been authorised to take all measures to "protect the safety of the country and its citizens", says the statement from the king.
On Monday, forces from Gulf countries arrived to bolster the regime.
@'BBC'
BBCBreaking BBC Breaking News
Accident at #Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant upgraded to level six crisis, on scale of seven, say French officials - AFP
Here's the Truth, where's the Justice
Here's the truth, where's the Justice, is a short film about how the Hillsborough football disaster on April 15th 1989 links two people together. Anne Williams and John Herbert.
Made by M3D 3rd year Media group:
Terry Rytz
Jennifer Robinson
Annemarie Mcalister
Declan Mcgettigan
kodenine kode nine
Don;t get it twisted. I don't hate genres. My genre is called bubble'n'squeak, and your genre is shit.
The front page of the People’s Daily newspaper, March 14, 2011
The front page of the People’s Daily newspaper, March 14, 2010
People’s Daily: Two Years, Two Editions, One Front Page?
How much of Japan's suffering can people comprehend?
The American author Annie Dillard summed up well the difficulty of empathising with hordes of other people. "There are 1,198,500,000 people alive now in China," she wrote. "To get a feel for what this means, simply take yourself – in all your singularity, importance, complexity, and love – and multiply by 1,198,500,000. See? Nothing to it."
I came across that honest, wise remark this weekend, while watching the footage from Japan. The two did not sit well with each other. When a big disaster strikes, either here or abroad, politicians and journalists alike work on the basis that the greater the misery, the more they, and we, should care. David Cameron was working to that logic when he said yesterday that "our thoughts are with the Japanese people". And after reading the reports of 10,000-plus deaths and nuclear warnings, or seeing the photos of submerged towns and stranded survivors, who could disagree?
Yet the uncomfortable truth is that the academic research suggests Dillard is right. However horrifying the pictures, however moving the reports, there's a limit to how much suffering people can take on board – and it's extremely low.
The bigger the numbers of fatalities and injuries, the harder it is for audiences to comprehend them. This law of diminishing returns doesn't just apply to natural disasters, but to other varieties of misery – from oil spills to famines and genocides.
"Psychic numbing" is how the University of Oregon psychologist Paul Slovic refers to this. To illustrate what he means, he sometimes sketches two graphs. The first shows how we might believe we value human lives, with the line going straight up along a diagonal: the more lives at stake, the more attention we pay. The second shows the reality, as Slovic sees it. Here the line starts off very high, but then drops all the way down: we get very worked up when one or two lives are at stake, but then the numbers begin to blur and we tune out.
The result is that humans will often throw money at one sad story – even when it doesn't involve a human. Researchers sometimes quote the story of how more than $48,000 was raised in 2002 to save a dog stranded on a ship adrift near Hawaii. Charities know this impulse too, which is why they often put a single child on their envelopes and posters...
I came across that honest, wise remark this weekend, while watching the footage from Japan. The two did not sit well with each other. When a big disaster strikes, either here or abroad, politicians and journalists alike work on the basis that the greater the misery, the more they, and we, should care. David Cameron was working to that logic when he said yesterday that "our thoughts are with the Japanese people". And after reading the reports of 10,000-plus deaths and nuclear warnings, or seeing the photos of submerged towns and stranded survivors, who could disagree?
Yet the uncomfortable truth is that the academic research suggests Dillard is right. However horrifying the pictures, however moving the reports, there's a limit to how much suffering people can take on board – and it's extremely low.
The bigger the numbers of fatalities and injuries, the harder it is for audiences to comprehend them. This law of diminishing returns doesn't just apply to natural disasters, but to other varieties of misery – from oil spills to famines and genocides.
"Psychic numbing" is how the University of Oregon psychologist Paul Slovic refers to this. To illustrate what he means, he sometimes sketches two graphs. The first shows how we might believe we value human lives, with the line going straight up along a diagonal: the more lives at stake, the more attention we pay. The second shows the reality, as Slovic sees it. Here the line starts off very high, but then drops all the way down: we get very worked up when one or two lives are at stake, but then the numbers begin to blur and we tune out.
The result is that humans will often throw money at one sad story – even when it doesn't involve a human. Researchers sometimes quote the story of how more than $48,000 was raised in 2002 to save a dog stranded on a ship adrift near Hawaii. Charities know this impulse too, which is why they often put a single child on their envelopes and posters...
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Aditya Chakrabortty @'The Guardian'
Will Congress Push Google To Tweak Its Algorithm To Punish Pirate Sites?
Judging by today’s hearings, some members of Congress are willing to consider radical measures to rid the internet of “rogue” websites accused of piracy. Among them: getting search engines like Google (NSDQ: GOOG) to tweak their search results, and ordering ISPs to block certain websites from U.S. viewers altogether. Until several months ago, Congress had never even discussed taking steps like these. The fact that they are now on the table is probably a function of several factors, including aggressive lobbying by the entertainment industry and a proliferation of illegal content online.
Congress first started considering the idea of allowing federal law enforcement to block websites in September, when Sen. Patrick Leahy introduced the controversial COICA bill in the last Congress. Now the House of Representatives is considering a similar proposal, although no bill has yet been introduced...
Congress first started considering the idea of allowing federal law enforcement to block websites in September, when Sen. Patrick Leahy introduced the controversial COICA bill in the last Congress. Now the House of Representatives is considering a similar proposal, although no bill has yet been introduced...
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Joe Mullin @'paidContent'
guardian_world Guardian World
#wikileaks cable: Japan govt "obscuring costs and problems" in nuclear industry bit.ly/fbY95t #Fukushima
Ernest Ranglin - Fireside Chat @ RBMAR
Ernest Ranglin's first instrument was the ukulele and his musical hero was the American jazz guitarist Charlie Christian - but he went on to preside over the birth of ska and its mutation into reggae. Without him, Jamaican music from Prince Buster to Bob Marley might have sounded very different. Born in rural Jamaica in 1932, it's an entire half-century has elapsed since Ranglin began his recording career for Chris Blackwell's Island label in 1958. Ernest is respected and renowned the world over and was awarded the Order of Distinction from the Jamaican Government for his contributions to music. He has collaborated with Prince Buster, Mille Small and Monty Alexander amongst innumerable others and career milestones include 'Rivers of Babylon' with the Melodians and playing guitar on 'It Hurts to be Alone' with The Wailers. In recent years he's made some fine records under his own name that have explored reggae's links with African music, including 'In Search Of The Lost Riddim', recorded in Senegal with Baaba Maal's band, and Alextown, a jazzy collaboration with South African township musicians. We were indeed honored when Mr Ranglin agreed to spare some time to come and chat by the Fireside with us.
Ernest Ranglin & Monty Alexander - Confucius - Telarc
Charlie Parker - Bebop - Essence
Ernest Ranglin - Liquidation - K&K
Prince Buster - Madness - Rhino
Millie Small - My Boy Lollipop - Island
Ernest Ranglin - Dr. No Go - K&K
Sound Dimension - Heavy Rock - Soul Jazz
The Melodians - Rivers Of Babylon - Mango
Ernest Ranglin - Surfin - Soul Jazz
Ernest Ranglin & Sound Dimension - Straight Flush - Soul Jazz
Ernest Ranglin - Satta Massagana - Island
Prince Buster - Wash Wash - Sequel
Ernest Ranglin - King Tubby Meets The Rockers - Island
Ernest Ranglin - Below The Bass Line - Island
Ernest Ranglin & Jackie Mittoo - Jericho Skank - Soul Jazz
'Steal your face right off your head' - The making of the Stealie logo
This is the logo that Bob Thomas and I designed for the Grateful Dead in 1969
How it came to be:
In 1969 the Dead were renting a warehouse in Novato, California. I was sound man for the band at the time, and lived in Oakland. Bob Thomas, an old friend of mine had just moved from LA to the Bay area and needed a place to stay, and we needed someone to look after the warehouse, which had had a problem with break-ins.
Bob was a superb graphic artist whose work is now familiar to most Deadheads in the form of the Live Dead album cover and the Bear's Choice cover, on which the popular Dancing Bears appeared.
The Dead in those days had to play in a lot of festival style shows where the equipment would all wind up at the back of the stage in a muddle. Since every band used pretty much the same type of gear it all looked alike. We would spend a fair amount of time moving the pieces around so that we could read the name on the boxes. I decided that we needed some sort of marking that we could identify from a distance.
I was in the habit of driving from Oakland to Novato in a little MGTF which had plastic side curtains, which were not very transparent, due to aging of the plastic. One day in the rain, I looked out the side and saw a sign along the freeway which was a circle with a white bar across it, the top of the circle was orange and the bottom blue. I couldn't read the name of the firm, and so was just looking at the shape. A thought occurred to me: if the orange were red and the bar across were a lightning bolt cutting across at an angle, then we would have a very nice, unique and highly identifiable mark to put on the equipment.
At the warehouse I told Bob the idea that I had, and he made a quick sketch. A mutual friend, Ernie Fischbach, who was visiting with Bob, said "Give it to me, I'll show you an easy way to put it on the boxes." Whereupon he proceeded to cut holes in a couple of pieces of stencil paper. One was a circular hole, about 5 1/2 inches in diameter, and the other was a part of a circle 5 inches in diameter. But it was a half circle with a jagged edge. Then he held the stencil to an amp and sprayed a circle of white paint. Then with one side up, the red half circle went on top of the dried white paint and after wiping off the red and turning the stencil over, the blue was applied. This was the first version, and we put it on to all our gear. It helped make it easier to find our stuff in the crunch. I still have an old toolbox with one of the stencils on it.
A few days later I was talking to Bob and suggested that perhaps the words "Grateful dead" could be placed under the circle, using a style of lettering that would appear to be a skull if you saw it from a distance (I guess I was influenced by too many posters of the time). Any way a few hours later he came down from the loft with the design we know and love.
In 1992, Bob decided to produce hand-pulled prints of the logo as a hardwood block engraving, but first he cut a test block in pine, to see how the design looked as a woodcut. He liked the test block so well that he decided to pull 50 prints, signed, numbered and hand coloured them. He gave the last of the prints to me (a few months before he died) to help sell them. Most have now been sold. Please write if you are interested in getting one of the ones left, the money goes to his family. This was one of the last pieces he did. Here is a scan (trimmed down a little). The print is on heavy, off-white watercolour paper 14" by 17".
Owsley Stanley @'thebear.org'
The logo with lettering by Rick Griffin as used on 'Steal Your Face'
Owsley Stanley: The King of LSD
No one did more to alter the consciousness of the generation that came of age in the 1960s than Augustus Owsley Stanley (who passed away March 13, 2011). Long before the Summer of Love drew thousands of hippies to Haight-Ashbury, Owsley was already an authentic underground folk hero, revered throughout the counterculture for making the purest form of LSD ever to hit the street. Yet today, at seventy-two, he is all but forgotten.Almost forty years to the day after he blew minds at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967, with a brand-new batch of "Monterey Purple," Owsley is checking out of a motel in nearby Carmel. Three years ago, he underwent extensive radiation for throat cancer, losing thirty pounds in the process. He is moving so slowly that someone from the front desk comes to the room to ask if he ever intends to leave. Ignoring the inquiry, Owsley roots through his bags for a large state-of-the-art conical burr grinder and a white funnel-shaped device to heat water so he can make coffee from beans he grew and roasted at home in Australia. As the water boils, he packs up a Braun food mixer and the vast array of other gadgets he carries with him.
He puts on a pair of old bluejeans that are now several sizes too big and places a brown Thinsulate stocking cap on his head. With his dark-brown goatee and a gold hoop dangling from his left ear, he looks like an older, careworn version of the Edge from U2. Unable to swallow solid food since the cancer treatments, he laments that he can no longer enjoy dining out with friends. Suddenly, his eyes redden and he is nearly reduced to tears. Quickly regaining control, he says, "But, hey, I'm alive, right?" Without waiting for an answer, he stalks out the motel-room door.
In the Oxford English dictionary, the word "Owsley" is listed as a noun describing a particularly pure form of LSD. But manufacturing acid is not the only accomplishment on Owsley's résumé. He was the Grateful Dead's original sound man and their initial financial benefactor. Without his technical innovations — he was one of the first people to mix concerts live and in stereo — the band might never have emerged from the San Francisco scene. And because he had the foresight to plug a tape recorder directly into the sound board during Dead shows, the music the band made at the peak of its power has been gloriously preserved in recordings still being issued in the series titled Dick's Picks, for which Owsley continues to receive royalties...
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Robert Greenfield @'Rolling Stone'
This article appeared in the July 12-27, 2007 issue of Rolling Stone.
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