Peaches - Forever Dark Takeover
56 minutes ago
Wednesday, 8 June 2011
William S. Burroughs - Is Everybody In?
William S. Burroughs reads poetry by Jim Morrison over music provided by The Doors on the track 'Is Everybody In?'
Extended Mix 'Vietnam Never Happened' after the jump
Coming soon...
Shane from 'Memoires of a Heroinhead' has a new venture...
Posting will begin within the next few days...
Check it out
Producers Series #13: Martin Rushent
It seemed fitting for us to run Martin Rushent next in the Producers Series due to his untimely passing this week. For a lot of people he opened the door to electronic music by taking synths to Top Of The Pops and beyond, and was, in many eyes an out and out genius. Play loud.
Download
@'Test Pressing'
@'Test Pressing'
Tuesday, 7 June 2011
Syrian blogger Amina Abdallah kidnapped by armed men
I am Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari’s cousin and have the following information to share.
Earlier today, at approximately 6:00 pm Damascus time, Amina was walking in the area of the Abbasid bus station, near Fares al Khouri Street. She had gone to meet a person involved with the Local Coordinating Committee and was accompanied by a friend.
Amina told the friend that she would go ahead and they were separated. Amina had, apparently, identified the person she was to meet. However, while her companion was still close by, Amina was seized by three men in their early 20’s. According to the witness (who does not want her identity known), the men were armed. Amina hit one of them and told the friend to go find her father.
One of the men then put his hand over Amina’s mouth and they hustled her into a red Dacia Logan with a window sticker of Basel Assad. The witness did not get the tag number. She promptly went and found Amina’s father.
The men are assumed to be members of one of the security services or the Baath Party militia. Amina’s present location is unknown and it is unclear if she is in a jail or being held elsewhere in Damascus.
I have just spoken with her father who is trying to locate her. He has asked me to share this information with her contacts in the hope that someone may know her whereabouts and so that she might be shortly released.
If she is now in custody, he is not worried about being in hiding and says he will do anything he can to free her. If anyone knows anything as to her whereabouts, please contact Abdallah al Omari at his home or please email me, Rania Ismail, at onepathtogod at gmail dot com.
We are hoping she is simply in jail and nothing worse has happened to her. Amina had previously sent me several texts to post should something happen to her and we will wait until we have definite word before doing so.
Salamat,
Rania O. Ismail
Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces Of A Man
Small Talk At 125th & Lenox (Flying Dutchman 1970)
Even on arrival, GSH presents something of an anachronism - and yet being out of step is the source of his power, the sign of his integrity. Presenting his verse as casually overheard Harlem breeze-shooting, he welds a soft spoken freejazz intensity to the radical clarity of Greenwich Village Old Left folk-coffeeshop, American demotic poetry. But folk and the Old Left are dead, as are Ayler and Coltrane; and Harlem and poetry may be dying. Opt out disillusion, shaped by shutdown, rules: if politics is the Art of the Possible, the limits of this Possible - pushed way out in the mid 60s - are now contracting. King and the Kennedys are gone, Vietnam never ends, Nixon has been elected to roll Civil Rights back. Committed first and last to the classic rad-lib notion that rigorous thinking and precision journalism can seize the times and talk things better, Small Talk foregrounds the first two stages of Agitate, Educate and Organise. Poetry rather than pop, jazz rather than rock, for small rather than mass audiences, time now rather than recorded, displaced, repeatable. (MS)
Pieces Of A Man (Flying Dutchman 1971)
Small Talk fired volleys of radical invective into multiple, prototypical targets - institutionalised racism, hypocrisy on Capitol Hill, the divisive, Black-Not-Black aspirations of the Afro-American bourgeoisie. The word was right and exact - but its constituency was limited by the context (high-rap monologues over distant drums). Pieces unites GSH with Brian Jackson, and brings in Johnny 'Shaft In Africa' Tate to orchestrate backing tracks that meld soul, jazz and funk, to instantly ratchet Gil's outreach towards the Black American underclass - his rightful audience. "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" is edgy, urgent proto-funk - drawing you into the lyric and a disgusted assault on the Brothers who watch TV while the struggle rages in the streets below. Much of the rest of the album is downbeat - low, mid-tempo Blues framing some of Gil's most trenchant reflections. "Save The Children" insists on political and economic security for future generations, the title track details a personal history of pain and regret that is almost unbearably poignant and "The Prisoner" turns the opening track's direct address into the special pleading of a man crumbling from too many years of ghetto oppression - a harrowing, emotive plateau whose call for communal self-help and awareness remains undiminished. (NW)
Free Will (Flying Dutchman 1972)
High elected politicians had rendered paranoia not merely respectable, but quite literally necessary to understanding a day's headlines ("NIXON BUGS SELF" The New York Post). Reflective soul-jazz dominates the first half of Free Will, the mood flipping swiftly into all-acoustic percussion discussion, Gil rapping out against No Knock and other police crimes against the Black community. Hubert Laws provides this first half with suitably piping, paranoid flute; the set begins hyperactively urgent with "Free Will" itself, groove courtesy Prettie Purdie on drums - when the acoustic personnel take over, the force of the music is greater, but not much. This sense that we're still in the same world, that a music which can quite happily be called 'fusion' can inflect rage and suspicion quite as capably as the most focussed bongo fury, tells all that needs to be told - the Conspiracy Theory of History has never really been alien to any sector of Black cultural production. Fusion was also once a fiercely radical possibility and the point - in "Ain't No New Thing" - where Gil suggests that the next white rock band might as well include Lyndon Johnson for all it means to African Americans, is a sharp rejoinder to the view that musicians like Laws are sell-outs. (MS)
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Metaphor is the new weapon in the 'war' on terror
At first sight it looked like an April Fools' joke. A branch of the US intelligence service called the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) announced that it would be pouring millions of dollars into a "Metaphor Programme". "Perhaps it's a red herring," observed a colleague, entering into the spirit of the thing. But then we remembered that the US intelligence establishment doesn't do jokes, on account of it comprising lots of smart folks whose sense of humour was surgically removed at birth. So I read on.
"The Metaphor Programme," said the solicitation (ie call for research proposals) from IARPA's Office of Incisive Analysis (I am not making this up), "will exploit the fact that metaphors are pervasive in everyday talk and reveal the underlying beliefs and worldviews of members of a culture. In the first phase of the two-phase programme, performers [IARPA's intriguing term for researchers] will develop automated tools and techniques for recognising, defining and categorising linguistic metaphors associated with target concepts and found in large amounts of native-language text."
Ah! So it's computational linguistics on steroids. But why would US spooks suddenly develop an interest in an area that has hitherto been the preserve of humanities scholars? The answer has to be that they now hoover up every digital communication across thye globe, but lack the capacity to extract meaningful information from the resulting torrent of data. Given the scale of that torrent, the only way to analyse it is by using computers. The problem is that while computers are good at processing data, they're hopeless at understanding it.
Which is where metaphor comes in. The spooks' conjecture is that understanding how humans use metaphors might provide an efficient way of extracting meanings from messages. So the project's goal, says its programme manager, Heather McCallum-Bayliss, is to "exploit the use of metaphorical language to gain insights into underlying cultural beliefs by developing and applying a methodology that automates the analysis of metaphorical language".
Dr McCallum-Bayliss's presentation explaining the project makes fascinating reading. "Understanding the shared concepts and patterned behaviours of a culture is a significant challenge," she writes, "because cultural norms tend to be hidden. Even cultural natives have difficulty defining them. Having a system that could discover and structure cultural beliefs and perspectives would be valuable to novice and seasoned analysts alike."
An intelligence analyst, it seems, "needs to know the worldviews of the various cultures that she deals with. She presents a cross-cultural problem to the Metaphorical Language Analysis System to gain an understanding of the contrasting perspectives of the parties involved. The system offers two capabilities to the analyst. One will show cultural contrasts in the metaphors used for abstract and social concepts: Life is a Game vs. Life is a Struggle. The second will present a structured representation of the metaphors that expose insight into the views and goals of the protagonists in the situation."
Analysis of McCallum-Bayliss's presentation suggests that it owes much to Metaphors We Live By, a celebrated book by George Lakoff, a linguist, and Mark Johnson, a philosopher, which argues that metaphor is not just a device of the poetic imagination but something that is pervasive in everyday life. Our ordinary conceptual system, the thing that determines how we think and act, is, they believe, "fundamentally metaphorical in nature".
The inference is that if you understand how people in different cultures use metaphor, then you will have gained insights into how they think, and how they view the world. In their book, Lakoff and Johnson demonstrate this by conventional linguistic analysis. The hunch that is driving the IARPA project is that it may be possible to automate this kind of analysis.
At this stage there's no way of knowing if the hunch will turn out to be a pipe dream or a potentially sinister reality.
What's interesting is that serious people are apparently willing to pour large amounts of money into exploring it. But its audacity fits well with IARPA's declared mission to invest in "high-risk/high-payoff research programmes that have the potential to provide our nation with an overwhelming intelligence advantage over future adversaries".
The agency says that it is determined "about taking real risk", that it is not looking for "quick wins", "low-hanging fruit" or "sure things" and that "failure is completely acceptable as long as "results are fully documented". Coming from a government organisation, this is fighting talk indeed.
But most of all, it supports the theory that there really is no such thing as "useless" knowledge.
The thought that their work might one day fuel the "war" on terror will have generations of literary scholars revolving in their graves. And that's a metaphor too.
John Naughton @'The Guardian'
"The Metaphor Programme," said the solicitation (ie call for research proposals) from IARPA's Office of Incisive Analysis (I am not making this up), "will exploit the fact that metaphors are pervasive in everyday talk and reveal the underlying beliefs and worldviews of members of a culture. In the first phase of the two-phase programme, performers [IARPA's intriguing term for researchers] will develop automated tools and techniques for recognising, defining and categorising linguistic metaphors associated with target concepts and found in large amounts of native-language text."
Ah! So it's computational linguistics on steroids. But why would US spooks suddenly develop an interest in an area that has hitherto been the preserve of humanities scholars? The answer has to be that they now hoover up every digital communication across thye globe, but lack the capacity to extract meaningful information from the resulting torrent of data. Given the scale of that torrent, the only way to analyse it is by using computers. The problem is that while computers are good at processing data, they're hopeless at understanding it.
Which is where metaphor comes in. The spooks' conjecture is that understanding how humans use metaphors might provide an efficient way of extracting meanings from messages. So the project's goal, says its programme manager, Heather McCallum-Bayliss, is to "exploit the use of metaphorical language to gain insights into underlying cultural beliefs by developing and applying a methodology that automates the analysis of metaphorical language".
Dr McCallum-Bayliss's presentation explaining the project makes fascinating reading. "Understanding the shared concepts and patterned behaviours of a culture is a significant challenge," she writes, "because cultural norms tend to be hidden. Even cultural natives have difficulty defining them. Having a system that could discover and structure cultural beliefs and perspectives would be valuable to novice and seasoned analysts alike."
An intelligence analyst, it seems, "needs to know the worldviews of the various cultures that she deals with. She presents a cross-cultural problem to the Metaphorical Language Analysis System to gain an understanding of the contrasting perspectives of the parties involved. The system offers two capabilities to the analyst. One will show cultural contrasts in the metaphors used for abstract and social concepts: Life is a Game vs. Life is a Struggle. The second will present a structured representation of the metaphors that expose insight into the views and goals of the protagonists in the situation."
Analysis of McCallum-Bayliss's presentation suggests that it owes much to Metaphors We Live By, a celebrated book by George Lakoff, a linguist, and Mark Johnson, a philosopher, which argues that metaphor is not just a device of the poetic imagination but something that is pervasive in everyday life. Our ordinary conceptual system, the thing that determines how we think and act, is, they believe, "fundamentally metaphorical in nature".
The inference is that if you understand how people in different cultures use metaphor, then you will have gained insights into how they think, and how they view the world. In their book, Lakoff and Johnson demonstrate this by conventional linguistic analysis. The hunch that is driving the IARPA project is that it may be possible to automate this kind of analysis.
At this stage there's no way of knowing if the hunch will turn out to be a pipe dream or a potentially sinister reality.
What's interesting is that serious people are apparently willing to pour large amounts of money into exploring it. But its audacity fits well with IARPA's declared mission to invest in "high-risk/high-payoff research programmes that have the potential to provide our nation with an overwhelming intelligence advantage over future adversaries".
The agency says that it is determined "about taking real risk", that it is not looking for "quick wins", "low-hanging fruit" or "sure things" and that "failure is completely acceptable as long as "results are fully documented". Coming from a government organisation, this is fighting talk indeed.
But most of all, it supports the theory that there really is no such thing as "useless" knowledge.
The thought that their work might one day fuel the "war" on terror will have generations of literary scholars revolving in their graves. And that's a metaphor too.
John Naughton @'The Guardian'
Al Qaeda's Toughest Task
But does cutting the head off the snake really matter? Can't they just be replaced by the next militant waiting in the wings?
Not so easily. Although the consensus among experts is often that the deaths of such tactically and ideologically important leaders do not destroy groups, their loss does have an effect. Kashmiri's death will not herald the end of violence in Pakistan or the threat to the West, but it will reduce al Qaeda's capacity to strike. Long-standing warrior leaders are important figures in the ideological clash against groups believing themselves in a millenarian struggle. Bringing the big men down will help accelerate their groups' demise.
Leaders like Kashmiri, who lost a finger and an eye in the Afghan war against the Soviets, are able to provide inspiration through their biographies. His time as a fighter in Afghanistan and Kashmir gave him connections across groups and networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and gave him a reputation as a fierce warrior leader. He built this personal narrative and connections into a formidable network operating under the name 313 Brigade, in reference to the 313 companions who fought alongside the Prophet Mohammed at the Battle of Badr, and was named by Masri as the leader of al Qaeda in Kashmir. He was also clearly effective in providing direction to terrorist cells, as shown by his suspected involvement in the May 22 attack on Karachi's naval base (his latest attack on the Pakistani state), strikes in India coordinated from his base in Pakistan, and his ambitious plan to attack newspaper offices in Copenhagen...
Continue reading
Seun Kuti out with Fury
His father was Fela Anikulapo Kuti; he was a king and president at the Kalakuta Republic.
Being Fela’s (last) son confers royalty on him; the royalty of the Afrobeat dynasty that has refused to fade away in the consciousness of the people who either loved or hated the man, Fela, his ways, his message and his music.
All that he was and ever wanted to be is being amplified on stages across the world with the Broadway show.
Fela was unarguable the most vocal and the loudest musical voice of his generation.
If you grew up and survived on a good ration of ‘Unknown Soldier’, ‘Zombie’, ‘Beast of no Nation’, ‘Shuffering and Shimilling’ and the countless hits that Fela created while he was here, you might want to wean yourself of those staple and listen to the new sound of Afrobeat a la Seun Anikulapo Kuti.
From Africa with Fury: Rise, the title of Seun’s second studio release speaks volumes. But you have to wait and listen to it contemplatively to make a decision for yourself whether dropping copies all over Libya will fuel or bring a solution to that country’s uprising like Seun suggested in a recent interview: “You want to help African people – why don’t you stop African rulers from stashing their wealth in your countries? I think a better way for the British and U.S. governments is to load their planes full of my albums and drop them on Libya.”
The album is a call on compatriots, African compatriots, to rise against the forces that enslave Africa. You will even hear names like Mosanto and Haliburton. You will hear chorus lines like “our ears don full for your words, our stomach still empty” in direct reference to the empty promises of the politicians who are full of words but with little action.
While I sat in the living room of his house off Allen Avenue, Ikeja, a call came in from a certain “big man” who wanted Seun to perform at the grand ball for the president after the inauguration on May 29. Fela’s son refused. “If I go, I will embarrass them and they would have to pull the plugs off the sound and hurry me off the stage. Besides, I think it is a ploy by the Presidency to put money in everyone’s pocket so as to silence them.”
With Seun, Afrobeat has not lost the activism and the thrust to speak up for and on behalf of the masses. He said “Afrobeat is not selfish music.”
Seun has stripped his own Afrobeat off the elaboration and multiple movements of the Fela era and rendered it playable for radio in five/six minutes so that the message can be spread far and wide.
But the horns and the brass still ring through in distinct tones and riffs and melodic phrases to remember. However, it must be said that this is Afrobeat for the modern age or should we say that Afrobeat has found a truly youthful voice for the new age ensuring that you did not see its requiem at the death of its originator.
Brian Eno produced the seven-track album, which was recorded entirely in Brazil.
I personally wanted to see the striking strokes of Lemi Ghariokwu again on an Afrobeat project and Seun Kuti granted my wish with the album sleeve design – a colourful silhouette of Seun breathing into his saxophone and the titles of the track from the album as graffiti on the silhouetted impression of a son who has finally become a man with a voice that will not be ignored in the coming years.
Dafe Ivwurie @'Nigerian Daily Independent'
Classic Albums - Screamadelica (Primal Scream)
Primal Scream's seminal album Screamadelica was released in 1991, and synthesized the band's rock 'n' roll roots with the dance culture of that time; for many, the album's sound and imagery came to be regarded as quintessential symbols of the acid house era, perfectly catching the spirit and mood of the early 90s.
Using rare archive footage and special performances, this film tells the story of Screamadelica and its hit singles and dance anthems Loaded, Movin' On Up, Come Together and Don't Fight It, Feel It. From the formation of the band in Glasgow to winning the first-ever Mercury prize, the band members explain the record's inception with insights from main producer Andrew Weatherall, Creation Records founder Alan McGee and many others involved with or inspired by this joyful record.
Screamadelica both defines a generation and transcends its time, and is a true Classic Album.
‘Father Forgets’ (W. Livingston Larned)
Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside.
There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor.
At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, “Goodbye, Daddy!” and I frowned, and said in reply, “Hold your shoulders back!”
Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before your boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to the house. Stockings were expensive-and if you had to buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a father!
Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door. “What is it you want?” I snapped.
You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs.
Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding-this was my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years.
And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed!
It is feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: “He is nothing but a boy-a little boy!”
I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother’s arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much.
ViaWell, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding-this was my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years.
And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed!
It is feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: “He is nothing but a boy-a little boy!”
I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother’s arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much.
(For Spaceboy! XXX)
Reading by Dale Carnegie
Reading by Dale Carnegie
For Those About To Rock The Boat
"We got talking and they said yes there were some certain songs that worked and certain songs that didn't in terms of an actual change in the behaviour of the sharks.
"I started going through my albums and AC/DC was something that really hit the mark.
"Their behaviour was more investigative, more inquisitive and a lot less aggressive - they actually came past in a couple of occasions when we had the speaker in the water and rubbed their face along the speaker which was really bizarre."
@ABC Australia
Shackleton/Vengeance Tenfold - South Devon line
Sounduk is delighted to announce that unique British bass producer Shackleton will collaborate with his original musical partner, spoken word artist Vengeance Tenfold, to present his own distinctive vision of a journey through some very special parts of Devon for the second in our Sonic Journeys series.
In partnership with Beaford Arts and The Dartington Hall Trust, sounduk has commissioned Shackleton and Vengeance Tenfold to create and record an exclusive new Sonic Journey in response to and inspired by sections of two of the most beautiful stretches of train line in the South West – using part of the main line between Exeter and Totnes, and part of the Tarka line between Exeter and Barnstaple.
In partnership with Beaford Arts and The Dartington Hall Trust, sounduk has commissioned Shackleton and Vengeance Tenfold to create and record an exclusive new Sonic Journey in response to and inspired by sections of two of the most beautiful stretches of train line in the South West – using part of the main line between Exeter and Totnes, and part of the Tarka line between Exeter and Barnstaple.
Edge Of England: A Sonic Journey With Shackleton & Vengeance Tenfold
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Witchhunt Suite for WWIII
The August 18th, 2008 episode of Talk's Cheap featured a live session from Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti. Ariel Pink stopped by the WFMU studios backed by Kenny Gilmore on keys/guitar, Jimi Hey on drums, Tim Koh on bass, and Cole M. Greif-Neill on guitar. Members of this all-star lineup have also played in Lilys, White Magic, Lavender Diamond, Devendra Bahnhardt, Cibo Matto, and the list goes on. This well-seasoned group brought the Haunted Graffiti to life with professional attitude in the midst of their "Thanks Mom I'm Dead" tour.
Engineered 8/1/08 by Gil Shuster
Some post-production by Jason (I ran it thru my tape deck)
Via
The Bad Plus invited by the Frankfurt Radio Bigband 14/05/2011
Ethan Iverson (Piano)
Reid Anderson (Bass)
Dave King (Drums)
Frankfurt Radio Bigband directed by Jim McNeely
http://www.thebadplus.com/
Bailey Review of the Commercialisation and Sexualisation of Childhood: Final report published
Via the Department for Education website:
Download links to PDF versions of the Review document and Appendices 1-4 via the DoE website here
I need to read the Review more closely but first thoughts include: how will these recommendations be implemented; what is Mr Bailey's definition of sexualisation, does he really understand how the internet works, and isn't this just treating symptoms not causes?
[Via Bird of Paradox]
A six-month independent review into the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood, which reports today, calls on businesses and media to play their part in ending the drift towards an increasingly sexualised 'wallpaper' that surrounds children.
Reg Bailey, Chief Executive of Mothers' Union, who led the independent review, has listened to parents' concerns about the barriers they face in bringing up their children. They are particularly unhappy with the increasingly sexualised culture surrounding their children, which they feel they have no control over. They singled out sexually explicit music videos, outdoor adverts that contain sexualised images, and the amount of sexual content in family programmes on TV.
Reg Bailey's recommendations are based on parents' concerns and are intended to support them, make sure their views are taken more seriously by businesses and broadcasters, and help children understand the potential dangers they face. They will put control back in the hands of families.
The recommendations include:
- Providing parents with one single website to make it easier to complain about any programme, advert, product or service.
- Putting age restrictions on music videos to prevent children buying sexually explicit videos and guide broadcasters over when to show them.
- Covering up sexualised images on the front pages of magazines and newspapers so they are not in easy sight of children.
- Making it easier for parents to block adult and age-restricted material from the internet by giving every customer a choice at the point of purchase over whether they want adult content on their home internet, laptops or smart phones.
- Retailers offering age-appropriate clothes for children - the retail industry should sign up to the British Retail Consortium's new guidelines which checks and challenges the design, buying, display and marketing of clothes, products and services for children.
- Restricting outdoor adverts containing sexualised imagery where large numbers of children are likely to see them, for example near schools, nurseries and playgrounds.
- Giving greater weight to the views of parents in the regulation of pre-watershed TV, rather than viewers as a whole, about what is suitable for children to watch.
- Banning the employment of children under 16 as brand ambassadors and in peer-to-peer marketing, and improving parents' awareness of advertising and marketing techniques aimed at children.
Download links to PDF versions of the Review document and Appendices 1-4 via the DoE website here
I need to read the Review more closely but first thoughts include: how will these recommendations be implemented; what is Mr Bailey's definition of sexualisation, does he really understand how the internet works, and isn't this just treating symptoms not causes?
[Via Bird of Paradox]
Monday, 6 June 2011
Bribery in India: A website for whistleblowers
Transport commissioner Bhaskar Rao has reformed his department with the help of ipaidabribe.com dataImagine if you had to pay a bribe to see your newborn baby, get your water supply connected or obtain your driving licence. It's an everyday fact of life in India - but campaigners are now fighting back, using people power and the internet.
"Uncover the market price of corruption," proclaims the banner on the homepage of ipaidabribe.com. It invites people to share their experiences of bribery, what a bribe was for, where it took place and how much was involved.
Launched in August, the site gives Indians a chance to vent their frustrations anonymously and shine a spotlight on the impact of corruption on everyday life.
"I did the driving test correctly but still the official said I was driving too slow, I realised his intention so gave him 200 Rupees and got the thing done," is a typical example of a posting.
The website was the brainwave of Ramesh and Swati Ramanathan, founders of a not-for-profit organisation in Bangalore called Janaagraha which literally means "people power".
"Bribery is routinely expected in interactions with government officials", Swati Ramanathan told me, "to register your house, to get your driving licence, domestic water connection, even a death certificate."Having lived in the US and the UK for several years, they were dismayed on their return to see how widespread corruption had become and decided to do something about it.
"We are all also responsible because we end up paying the darn bribes because otherwise you can never get anything done in India.
"We said, 'It's not enough to moralise, we need to find out what exactly is this corruption? What's the size of it?'"
'High reward'
The website has evolved into a consumer comparison site where people can also get information and advice in different languages on how to avoid paying bribes.
One woman told me how she got round paying a bribe to register her mother's house.
"I went with all the paperwork and at first they looked through it and said, 'Oh, I think one of the documents is not up to date.'
"What I had been told at the website is that this is one of the excuses they make to take a bribe, and what we need to do is tell them, 'OK, give it to me in writing with your stamp and seal, and I will make sure I get these documents the next time so that I can get it registered.'"
"The moment I said that, they backed off and said, 'No, no, it's OK, we will pass it through.'"So far, nearly 10,000 bribe experiences have been reported across 347 cities and 19 government departments.
As the numbers mount, Swati Ramanathan hopes the website will become a powerful tool for shaming government departments into tackling corruption.
"There is so little risk to being corrupt in our country and so high a reward," she explained.
"The moment you change the equation and you make it riskier, the reward becomes less. You make it riskier by making it public."
Hurt pride
One of the website's early successes has been with the State Transport Department of Karnataka, which was repeatedly cited in bribe reports - prompting transport commissioner Bhaskar Rao to invite the I Paid A Bribe team to present their findings to his staff.
"I wanted to use that website to cleanse my department," he said.
"If I try to do things on my own here, I may run into rough weather... But the evidence on this website gives me some internal support to bring about reforms.""People in the office are realising that if they take money, it definitely is not something just between the giver and the taker. It is spreading out of this room, and now across the globe, on the web.
"So everybody in the world gets to know that this office is not a good office and institutional pride is hurt."
The website team helped Bhaskar Rao's department to identify the procedures most prone to corruption.
Twenty senior officers have been cautioned, and technology is now being introduced to minimise the opportunities for bribe-taking.
For example, driving licences can now be applied for online, making the status of each application transparent to everyone involved.
Driving test bribery was a tougher problem. Bhaskar Rao turned to a local IT company to come up with a solution. The result: the world's first automated driving test centre opened in Bangalore this year.
Drivers register for the test using a smart card and have to negotiate their way around a paved driving track fitted with electronic sensors. Their progress is recorded electronically.
They also have to complete a screen-based test of their knowledge of the Highway Code. All opportunities for bribe-taking and bribe-giving have thus been removed.
Not surprisingly perhaps, there was some initial opposition from driving inspectors to the introduction of this automated test centre.
But it is now conducting up to 200 tests a day and has become a source of pride. And, they say, there are now a few better drivers on the Indian roads.
Solving the problem of bribery in India is not going to happen overnight. But ipaidabribe.com shows that ordinary people can be turned from the victims of corruption into part of the solution.
Mukti Jain Campion @'BBC'
Does A.A. Need God?
It's well known that A.A. dynamics vary widely, and many A.A. meetings over the years have ended with a group recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. “That has obviously stopped in all but hard-core groups, the A.A. member told the Star. “We welcome people with open arms.” We think that is the right approach, but banning the groups is an odd way to welcome them. “I’ve tried AA meetings and I couldn’t get past the influence of right-wing Christianity,” said another prospective member. Serving these drinkers is the goal of the atheist/agnostic groups.
“God as we understood him,” as it says in the Third Step, has been a stumbling block to many throughout A.A.’s 75-year history. Thinkers from Carl Jung to Gregory Bateson have seen in A.A.’s higher power not Godhead, but rather a recognition of processes beyond a single individual—the power of the many, compared to the power of one. The group itself becomes the “higher power,” in many cases. Is it time to officially admit that it's possible to be secular and sober in A.A.? Writer Joe Chisholm sent us this quote by A.A. co-founder Bill Wilson, from the A.A. Grapevine of April, 1961: “In AA’s first years I all but ruined the whole undertaking with this sort of unconscious arrogance. God as I understood Him had to be for everybody. Sometimes my aggression was subtle and sometimes it was crude. But either way it was damaging—perhaps fatally so—to numbers of non-believers.”
Here are two examples of the changes in the Twelve Steps that got Beyond Belief booted out of the Toronto A.A. circle:
Step Two: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Adapted version: Came to accept and to understand that we needed strengths beyond our awareness and resources to restore us to sanity.
Step Three: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.
Adapted version: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of the AA program.
Dirk Hanson @'The Fix'
Beyond AA: Online mag offers stories of addiction and DIY sobriety
Martin Rushent RIP
Rushent started as an engineer in the 1970s, working on records by T-Rex and Fleetwood Mac among others.
He produced the Human League's hit album Dare, which contained the classic "Don't You Want Me?".
The Stranglers paid tribute to him on their official website, saying: "We have just received the sad news that another early band collaborator, Martin Rushent, passed away yesterday aged 63."
Rushent produced the band's first three albums, Rattus Norvegicus, No More Heroes and Black and White.
@'BBC'
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