More
HERE
(Thanx BillT!)
(Thanx BillT!)
Tuesday 6 April 2010
'pedophiles go to jail' and 'church = mafia = state'
Seen on a wall of the Church of St Eutizio in Soriano on Easter Monday April 5, 2010
Beyond torture: the future of interrogation
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay: two names that have become synonymous in many people's minds with torture and abuse of human rights by American interrogators. When Barack Obama entered the White House in January 2009, he set out to erase the stain such practices have left on America's image. The High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group established later that year has as one of its stated aims to interrogate without brute force and to employ "scientifically proven" techniques - though without saying what these might be.
It seems like a noble goal, but on closer inspection it raises a host of questions. Can science validate interrogation techniques - and if so, how? What is the effect on the human mind of coercive interrogation that stops short of physical torture? And, crucially, are there any interrogation techniques that can be shown to be both effective and humane?
In the past, the US military used a set of 19 approved interrogation methods laid down in the Army Field Manual 2-22.3, which explicitly prohibits threats or coercion. Following the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, the George W. Bush administration decided that this should change. So, after legal consultations, new ways to apply pressure on people under interrogation were drawn up. For several years they remained secret, but more recently we have acquired a pretty good idea of the techniques interrogators used at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the US base at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.
Take, for example, the treatment log of Mohamed al-Kahtani, made public in March 2006. This revealed that for weeks on end he faced a daily routine of just 4 hours of interrupted sleep, prolonged stress positions, blaring music, extremes of temperature, and various humiliations - including being treated like a dog, and a mock birthday party at which he was shown puppet shows of himself engaging in sexual acts with Osama bin Laden.
The technique known as waterboarding, in which the subject experiences the sensation that they are drowning, was also common. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has claimed responsibility for planning the 9/11 attacks, was subjected to waterboarding more than 180 times in March 2003 alone.
Do any or all of these amount to torture? The 1984 UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment is somewhat vague. It differentiates between torture - "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person" - and "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" (CIDT). This distinction may reflect the notion that inserting needles under someone's fingernails or pulling out their teeth is in some way worse than, say, blindfolding and hooding, forced nudity, isolation, humiliation, forced stress positions, or deprivation of sleep or light.
Yet the UN convention is clear: both torture and CIDT are illegal. And maybe the distinction is unimportant anyway, as there appears to be little to choose between them in terms of the long-term ill-effects they cause to their victims.
Continue reading
International Paul Haig Day II
Includes exclusive mix from the man himself!
Well it is that time of the year again...
JC from the 'TheVinyl Villian' blog started this day last year after he was dealt a DMCA takedown notice for posting a track by Paul Haig. A track that was owned by him and had been given to the blog as a way of promoting his then new album.
You should of course know who Paul Haig is but if you don't then please visit all the blogs taking part today (there is a list over at the 'The Vinyl Villian' and by the end you should have built a good little introductory collection of mpfrees. Like Franz Ferdinand? Well a massive debt is owed to the man above...)
Anyway on to the DMCA process...well the problem is that I don't know where to begin... as the wiki article states:
"The DMCA has been criticized for making it too easy for copyright owners to encourage website owners to take down allegedly infringing content and links which may in fact not be infringing. When website owners receive a takedown notice it is in their interest not to challenge it, even if it is not clear if infringement is taking place, because if the potentially infringing content is taken down the website will not be held liable."
This blog has received three infringment notices in it's 4,500 post history, two of which were for links to 'the internet archive', which are legal downloads. I did write to blogger at the time pointing this out and never heard back but interestingly if you check up 'Exile On Moan Street' at 'Chilling Effects' there is only one one DMCA notice listed...and yes I was (probably) guilty that time!
Google themselves have said:
"that more than half (57%) of the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting competitors and over one third (37%) of notices were not valid copyright claims. "
This matters as this recent article at 'The Guardian' points out blogs are disappearing after only one DMCA notice! Blogger has never satisfactorily said under what circumstances they do delete blogs, but from what I can gather it seems to be after five notices usually.
There has also been cases like Sire Records having their official 'Youtoob' channel deleted for infringing copyright!!!
Bloggers, in the main are trying to point you to artists and songs that they like and want you to know and I am convinced this can only help the artists in question become better known...and do not get me started on Lily Allen biting the hand that fed her!
So it is with thanks to Paul Haig for getting bloggers on his side that I leave you with the first single from his first band from 1979 to his most recent song...
...and don't forget to visit 'The Vinyl Villian' for updates of other blog's posts throughout the day...
Monday 5 April 2010
Collateral Murder
WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff.
Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
Massacre in woods that brought war to Moscow's metro
Movsar Dakaev, 17, photographed on the garlic-picking expedition in the woods between Chechnya and Ingushetia that led to his death. Photograph: Memorial
When the shooting started Adlan Mutsaev and his friends were in the woods picking garlic. They had arrived in the forest earlier that day, together with a group of neighbours travelling in a battered coach. The plan had been straightforward: stuff their sacks, enjoy the countryside, and then head back home to the Chechen town of Achkoi-Martan.
Without warning, Russian commandos hiding behind a hillock opened fire.Adlan, 16, was with his brother Arbi, 19, and their friends Shamil Kataev, 19, and Movsar Tataev, 19. Shamil and Movsar were both wounded. Adlan was shot in the leg, but managed to hobble into a ditch. He hid. Arbi also attempted to flee, but men in camouflage fatigues caught up with him.
According to the human rights group Memorial, Arbi was forced to drag his two wounded and bleeding friends across the snow. Shamil begged for his life. But the solders were impervious. They placed a blindfold over Arbi's eyes. And then they opened fire: executing Shamil and Movsar on the spot. At least two other garlic pickers suffered the same fate: Ramzan Susaev, 40, and Movsar Dakaev, 17. According to his relatives, Dakaev had pleaded to be allowed on the trip with the others. Wearing a bright green fleece, he took a photo of himself in the woods with his mobile phone. It shows him proudly posing against a craggy backdrop of cliffs and trees covered in snow. A little over 48 hours later his body was discovered.
The misfortune of the four garlic pickers was to have unwittingly strayed into a "counter-insurgency operation" conducted by Russian forces in the densely wooded border between Chechnya and Ingushetia. The soldiers, apparently looking for militant rebels who are waging their own violent campaign against the Russian state, came across the unarmed group, brutally killing them amid the picturesque massif of low hills.
Normally this atrocity on a cold day in February would have raised barely a ripple of attention had it not been for the terrible events in Moscow this week. In a video address on Thursday, Chechnya's chief insurgent leader, Doku Umarov, said Monday's suicide attacks on the Russian capital's metro were in revenge for the killings of the garlic pickers near the Ingush village of Arshaty. He claimed federal security service (FSB) commandos had used knives to mutilate their bodies of the dead boys.
Forty people died and more than 70 were injured when two suicide attackers from the North Caucasus set off their devices at stations outside the headquarters of the FSB and Park Kultury.
Russia's counter-terrorism committee yesterday named the Park Kultury bomber as Dzhanet Abdurakhmanova, saying she was also known as Dzhanet Abdullayeva. Born in 1992, she came from Dagestan. Kommersant newspaper published a photo of her dressed in a black Muslim headscarf holding a pistol. It named the second bomber as 20-year-old Markha Ustarkhanova from Chechnya, describing her as the widow of a militant leader killed last October.
Linked or not, human rights groups say it is undeniable that the brutal actions of Russia's security forces have fuelled the insurgency raging across the North Caucasus region of Russia and the ethnic republics of Dagestan, Ingushetia, Chechnya and Kabardino-Balkaria. This largely invisible war has now reached the Kremlin's doorstep.
"People are abducted. People are killed. There are no guarantees of security," Magomed Mutsolgov, a human rights activist, told the Guardian yesterday, speaking from Nazran, Ingushetia's chief town. Law enforcement and security agencies have committed dozens of summary and arbitrary detentions, acts of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, as well as extra-judicial executions, rights groups say.
Typically, armed personnel wearing masks encircle a village or district in a "sweep operation". They force their way into homes, beat residents and damage property. Suspected militants are taken away. Many never return. Others are simply shot, and fake weapons planted on them, rights groups allege, citing interviews with victims and relatives.
According to Mutsolgov, the Kremlin's counter-terrorism methods have proved entirely counter-productive: "Violence produces more violence. It drives people to the militant underground."
The nature of the armed conflict in the North Caucasus has also mutated. From 1994 to 1996 Boris Yeltsin fought a war against mainly secular Chechen separatists who wanted – like the newly independent Georgians over the mountains – their own constitution and state. In 1999-2004 president Vladimir Putin fought a second Chechen war. The aim was to crush Chechen separatism.
Now, however, the Kremlin is battling another kind of enemy. The new generation of insurgents have an explicitly Islamist goal: to create a radical pan-Caucasian emirate with sharia law, a bit like Afghanistan under the Taliban. In February Umarov vowed to "liberate" not only the North Caucasus and Krasnodar Krai but Astrakhan – on the Caspian Sea -and the Volga region as well.
The rebels' tactics have also grown more fanatical. Umarov has seemingly revived the suicide squads used by his assassinated predecessor Shamil Basaev. Last summer a suicide truck bomber blew up Nazran's police station. Another bomber succeeded in ramming the car of Ingushetia's president, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov. Monday's attack in Moscow was the first in the capital for six years.
Increasingly, the rebels are also exploiting a new weapon: the web. On 2 March special forces launched a massive operation in Ekashevo, a suburb on the outskirts of Nazran. There they killed Said Buryatsky, a Siberian-born convert whose jihadist messages on YouTube had attracted a following among disaffected Muslims. Under fire from Russian artillery, Buryatksy recorded a final message for his global disciples.
Yesterday Russian forces had sealed off Ekashevo. But video footage obtained by Memorial shows a picture of devastation: pulverised houses, wrecked cars and alleyways strewn with bricks. After the battle Russian forces displayed a haul of weapons seized from the rebels – together with a blown-off human hand.
Human rights groups are critical of both sides. They accuse the rebels and government of failing to respect human life. Timur Akiev, the head of Memorial's Nazran office, said: "The government's methods have led to a radicalisation of the underground. The rebels now have only one goal: to beat Russia at any price. The rebels and the security forces behave in the same way towards each other. The civilian population is caught in the middle."
Like its imperial tsarist predecessors, who subdued the Caucasus in a sustained and savage campaign of tree-felling and village-burning, today's Russian leadership has little understanding of the region or its habits, Akiev suggested.
He also condemned Monday's bombings. "I don't understand how you can kill Russian civilians in revenge for the killing of Chechen civilians. It's absurd. The people who died in the metro had nothing to do with the conflict."
The Kremlin's response to the metro bombings has been, predictably, vengeful. Vladimir Putin has called for those responsible to be "scraped from the sewers". Dmitry Medvedev, the president, visited Kizlyar on Thursday, a day after twin suicide bombers killed 12 people and injured 28 others.
Security forces should "get more cruel", he recommended. "Quite a lot has been achieved in fighting terrorism lately," Medvedev said. "We have twisted the heads off the most odious bandits. But that, by all accounts, is not enough. We will track them down and punish all of them. We must deal sharp dagger blows to the terrorists, and destroy them and their lairs."
Before Monday's Moscow bombings, Medvedev had taken a few tentatively creative steps in the region, including appointing a new federal envoy. But the key problems remain. There are numerous socio-economic factors driving the insurgency: poverty, unemployment (running unofficially at around 75% in Ingushetia), police brutality, and corruption.
Back in Achkoi-Martan, it took relatives two days to discover what had happened to their loved ones. After hiding for 48 hours in a hole, fed by a spring, Adlan Mutaev crawled out of the forest. Local people discovered him alive on the edge of the wood. His brother Arbi was released by Russian commandos after two days. Human rights workers from Memorial arrived on 14 February, interviewing dozens of witnesses and taking photographs of corpses heaped up in the snow.
Those of Shamil Kataev revealed that he had been shot in the temple from close range. Someone had stolen his mobile phone and passport, as well as a letter from the head of Achkoi-Martin, granting the garlic pickers permission to be in the area. The body of Movsar Tataev was covered in gunshot wounds. In addition there were knife wounds to his spine and groin. Ramzan Susaev had been shot in the chest. His brother eventually found his body lying in the forest.
Unusually, Ingushetia's president Yevkurov quickly acknowledged that several innocent civilians had been killed in February's special operation. He added, however, that security forces had succeeded in killing 18 rebels, and said that the operation had served to increase the stability of the region. Both Chechnya and Ingushetia's rulers have paid the families of the dead teenage boys compensation.
Luke Harding @'The Guardian'
Photo of Movsar Dakaev NOT from 'The Guardian'
U.S. led forces in Afghanistan are committing atrocities, lying, and getting away with it
Hours later they revised the number of women “bound and gagged” to two and announced an enquiry. For more than a month they said nothing more on the matter.
The implication was clear: The dead militants were probably also guilty of the cold-blooded slaughter of helpless women prisoners. NATO said their intelligence had “confirmed militant activity”. As if to reinforce the point, coalition spokesman Brigadier General Eric Tremblay, a Canadian, talked in that second press release of “criminals and terrorists who do not care about the life of civilians”.
Only that’s not what happened, at all.
The militants weren’t militants, they were loyal government officials. The women, according to dozens of interviews with witnesses at the scene, were killed by the raiders. Two of them were pregnant, one was engaged to be married.
The only way I found out NATO had lied -- deliberately or otherwise -- was because I went to the scene of the raid, in Paktia province, and spent three days interviewing the survivors. In Afghanistan that is quite unusual.
NATO is rarely called to account. Their version of events, usually originating from the soldiers involved, is rarely seriously challenged.
This particular raid, in the early hours of Feb 12, piqued my interest. I contacted some of the relatives by phone, established it was probably safe enough to visit, and I finally made it to the scene almost a month after unidentified gunmen stormed the remnants of an all-night family party.
It’s not the first time I’ve found NATO lying, but this is perhaps the most harrowing instance, and every time I go through the same gamut of emotions. I am shocked and appalled that brave men in uniform misrepresent events. Then I feel naïve.
There are a handful of truly fearless reporters in Afghanistan constantly trying to break the military’s monopoly on access to the front. But far too many of our colleagues accept the spin-laden press releases churned out of the Kabul headquarters. Suicide bombers are “cowards,” NATO attacks on civilians are “tragic accidents,” intelligence is foolproof and only militants get arrested.
Some journalists in Kabul are hamstrung by security rules set in Europe or America, which often reflect the least permissive times in Baghdad rather than any realistic threats in Afghanistan. These reporters can’t leave their compounds without convoys of armed guards. They couldn’t dream of driving around rural Paktia, dressed up in local clothes and squashed into the back of an old Toyota Corolla, to interview the survivors of a night raid.
Ultra risk-averse organizations go even further and rely almost entirely on video footage and still images gifted by the entirely partial combat-camera teams or the coalition’s dedicated NATO TV unit, staffed by civilian ex-journalists who churn out good news b-roll. Others lap up this material because it’s cheaper and easier than having their own correspondents in a war zone.
This self-censorship is compounded by the “embed culture,” which encourages journalists to visit the frontlines with NATO soldiers, who provide them food, shelter, security and ultimately with stories. British troops will only accept journalists who let military censors approve their stories before they are filed. Ostensibly, this is to stop sensitive information reaching the insurgents. In my three and a half years in Afghanistan, the British invariably use it as an opportunity to editorialize.
In Helmand, in August 2008, a British censor attached to the Parachute Regiment threatened to ban me from ever embedding again if I filed footage of a paratrooper firing his heavy machine gun without wearing body armor. This had nothing to do with operational security and everything to do with health and safety, domestic UK politics (reference kit shortages and soldiers’ well-being), and ultimately “arse-covering” within the military.
To my eternal shame, I backed down. Embeds were my livelihood. I swapped the clip for something a combat camera team provided. But I was blacklisted for more than a year all the same -- for arguing.
The Americans are just as subtle. I was thrown off a trip with the Marines Special Operations Command troops (MarSOC) last year when they realized I had written a story many months earlier linking their colleagues to three of Afghanistan’s worst civilian casualty incidents.
The platoon commander boasted that his Special Forces were “a fusion of weapons and intelligence”. Two hours later he asked me what my name was. Then he booked me on the next flight out. At least we know the weapons work.
As a freelance reporter, as I was then, the NATO blacklist was a daunting prospect. Many journalists I know here still prefer access to truth. Looking back, for me, it was the best thing that could have happened.
I have traveled from the north east corner of Afghanistan to the capital of Helmand province, and every major city in between, independently. I plan hard and take local security advice, and I am lucky that my newspaper supports me.
NATO however, is continuing to fight back. Challenge them and they will challenge you. They have admitted that the dead women were not bound and gagged, but rather had been wrapped in ritual preparation for burial. But NATO still insits the women were killed before, not during, the firefight. They have also admitted the two dead men were not the intended target of the raid. But they have also tried hard to discredit me, personally, for bringing this to the world’s attention. In an unprecedented response to my original story about the Gardez night raid they named me individually, twice, in their denial of the cover up.
They claimed to have a recording of my conversation which contradicted my shorthand record. When I asked to hear it, they ignored me. When I pressed them, they said there had been a misunderstanding. When they said recording, they meant someone had taken notes. The tapes, they said, do not exist.
Since then the United Nations and the New York Times have both corroborated my findings. The New York Times repeated the accusation of a cover-up. I take solace from the more experienced and intrepid of my colleagues who have been through all this before. NATO lies and unless we check them, they get away with it. If we check them, they attack us. It's unpleasant but important. There’s no doubt in my mind that we must continue to question what the soldiers want us to know.
Jerome Starkey @'Nieman Watchdog'
U.S. Admits Role in February Killing of Afghan Women
...The admission was an abrupt about-face. In a statement soon after the raid, NATO had claimed that its raiding party had stumbled upon the “bodies of three women who had been tied up, gagged and killed” and hidden in a room in the house. Military officials had also said later that the bodies showed signs of puncture and slashing wounds from a knife, and that the women appeared to have been killed several hours before the raid.
And in what would be a scandalous turn to the investigation, The Times of London reported Sunday night that Afghan investigators also determined that American forces not only killed the women but had also “dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath” and then “washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened.”...
Full story
Sunday 4 April 2010
More Evidence Emerges That Pope Benedict Helped Shield Pedophiles Before He Became Pope
Continue reading
Matt Sedensky @'HuffPo'
California's AG finds 'NO violation of criminal law' in severly edited ACORN 'pimp'videos. Also releases raw footage for the first time
Echoing the recent report of the Kings County, NY, District Attorney who completed a five-month probe finding "no criminality" seen in video tapes secretly taken of low-level ACORN and ACORN Housing workers last year in New York, California's Attorney General has now reached a similar conclusion regarding videos recorded in three different cities in the Golden State last Summer, according to a report released today which finds the workers "committed no violation of criminal law."
Read the full report and see the raw footage
Eugene Terreblanche beaten to death in South Africa
South African white supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche has been killed on his farm in the country's north-west.
Mr Terreblanche, 69, was beaten to death after a dispute over unpaid wages, local media reports said. Two people are said to have been arrested.
President Jacob Zuma has appealed for calm, saying the killing should not incite racial hatred.
Mr Terreblanche, who campaigned for a separate white homeland, came to prominence in the early 1980s.
 | TERREBLANCHE: KEY DATES 1941: Born on a farm in conservative Transvaal town of Ventersdorp 1973: Co-founds right-wing AWB to protect rights of Boers' descendants 1993: AWB vehicle smashes into World Trade Centre in Johannesburg during negotiations to end apartheid 1994: AWB invades tribal homeland of Bophuthatswana and is defeated, with three AWB members killed 1998: Accepts moral responsibility for 1994 bombing campaign that killed 21 people 2001: Jailed for assaulting security guard 2004: Released from prison  |
"Mr Terreblanche's body was found on the bed with facial and head injuries," AFP news agency quoted a police spokesman as saying.
The report said he had been killed after a payment dispute with two workers, aged 21 and 15, who have been arrested in connection with his murder.
"He was hacked to death while he was taking a nap," a family friend in the town of Ventersdorp was quoted as telling Reuters news agency.
Mr Zuma condemned the killing as a "terrible deed".
"The president appeals for calm... and asks South Africans not to allow agent provocateurs to take advantage of this situation by inciting or fuelling racial hatred," his office said in a statement reported by South Africa's SAPA news agency.
"The murder of Terreblanche must be condemned, irrespective of how his killers think they may have been justified. They had no right to take his life."
Prison sentence
The murder comes amid growing anxiety about crime in South Africa and what opposition politicians say are irresponsible and racially inflammatory sentiments from a minority of the ruling ANC party, says the BBC's Karen Allen in Johannesburg. | ANALYSIS  Martin Plaut, Africa editor For most South Africans, Eugene Terreblanche was a throwback to another era. But his death is a blow to the country's image of racial tolerance, fostered so carefully by Nelson Mandela. Some are likely to believe that the fact that his alleged attackers were arrested so rapidly smacks of a cover-up. Others, on the minority far-right fringe, will see his death as a vindication of their assertion that whites cannot live under black rule. It is a tragic fact that more than 3,000 white farmers have been murdered since the end of apartheid in 1994. And it is possible that some people may seek retribution. Mr Terreblanche's funeral could become a rallying point for such sentiment. |
Our correspondent says it is too soon to say whether Saturday's killing was politically motivated.
However, a spokesman for Mr Terreblanche's Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement - AWB) linked the killing to the recent singing of an apartheid-era song by the head of the ANC's youth league.
"That's what this is all about," Andre Visagie told Reuters news agency. "They used pangas and pipes to murder him as he slept."
A spokeswoman for the opposition Democratic Alliance party pointed to racial tension.
Juanita Terblanche, who is no relation, said: "This happened in a province where racial tension in the rural farming community is increasingly being fuelled by irresponsible racist utterances."
Mr Terreblanche was released from prison in 2004 after serving three years of a five-year term for attempted murder.
He had founded the white supremacist AWB in 1973, to oppose what he regarded as the liberal policies of the then-South African leader, John Vorster.
 Terreblanche rides away after being released from prison in 2004 |
In the 1980s, the government of PW Botha considered a constitutional plan allowing South Africa's Asian and coloured (mixed-race) minorities to vote for racially segregated parliamentary chambers.
For the likes of Mr Terreblanche, this was the start of the slippery slope towards democracy, communism, black rule and the destruction of the Afrikaner nation, analysts say.
Claiming on occasion to be a cultural organisation - albeit one with sidearms and paramilitary uniforms - Mr Terreblanche and his men promised to fight for the survival of the white tribe of Africa.
An ill-fated military intervention into the Bophuthatswana homeland in 1994 ended with three AWB men being killed in front of TV cameras in a PR disaster that diminished further the seriousness with which Mr Terreblanche's movement was taken.
Mr Terreblance continued to campaign to preserve the apartheid system but lived in relative obscurity since it collapsed.
The AWB was revived two years ago and there had been recent efforts to form a united front among white far-right groups.
Peter Hook to play Joy Division's 'Unknown Pleasures' live in its entirety on the 30th anniversary of Ian Curtis's death
Peter Hook has announced plans to perform Joy Division's debut album live in its entirety to mark the 30th anniversary of the death of late singer Ian Curtis.
The ex-New Order bassist will be joined by a host of guests at the newly refurbished former Factory Records site FAC51 in Manchester on May 18, the same day Curtis hung himself in the kitchen of his home in Macclesfield.
Before that, Hook will showcase previously-unseen Joy Division and New Order footage as part of a new show set to tour the UK in April.
Billed 'An Evening Of Unknown Pleasures', the nights will see Hook give talks on his past bands and Factory Records along with the footage, plus live music. Fans will be able to quiz the bassist as part of the evening.
Peter Hook's 'An Evening Of Unknown Pleasures' will call at:
Birmingham Glee Club (April 11)
Bolton Albert Hall (12)
Worcester Huntingdon Hall (13)
Milton Keynes Stables (15)
Middlesbrough Town Hall (18)
Gateshead Sage (20)
Durham Gala (21)
Burnley Mechanics (22)
Cardiff Glee Club (25)
Oxford Academy (26)
Wakefield Theatre Royal (27)
Gloucester Guildhall (28)
Derby Assembly Rooms (29)
Norwich UEA (30)
Salford Lowry (May 1)
Hull Truck Theatre (2)
@'NME'
The ex-New Order bassist will be joined by a host of guests at the newly refurbished former Factory Records site FAC51 in Manchester on May 18, the same day Curtis hung himself in the kitchen of his home in Macclesfield.
Before that, Hook will showcase previously-unseen Joy Division and New Order footage as part of a new show set to tour the UK in April.
Billed 'An Evening Of Unknown Pleasures', the nights will see Hook give talks on his past bands and Factory Records along with the footage, plus live music. Fans will be able to quiz the bassist as part of the evening.
Peter Hook's 'An Evening Of Unknown Pleasures' will call at:
Birmingham Glee Club (April 11)
Bolton Albert Hall (12)
Worcester Huntingdon Hall (13)
Milton Keynes Stables (15)
Middlesbrough Town Hall (18)
Gateshead Sage (20)
Durham Gala (21)
Burnley Mechanics (22)
Cardiff Glee Club (25)
Oxford Academy (26)
Wakefield Theatre Royal (27)
Gloucester Guildhall (28)
Derby Assembly Rooms (29)
Norwich UEA (30)
Salford Lowry (May 1)
Hull Truck Theatre (2)
@'NME'
Tehran 1953
Shirin Neshat's first feature film Women without Men award Silver Lion at 66th (2009) Venice Film Festival in Italy. Women without Men chronicles the lives of four women from different walks of life against the backdrop of Irans foreign-backed CIA coup in 1953.....Copyright © Coprod Uction Office
Commerce Dept. Supports RIAA Bailout Radio Tax | Techdirt
This probably isn’t a huge surprise, but the Commerce Department has now come out in favor of the performance rights tax on radio stations, which will force radio stations to pay up to promote music. Basically, as it stands right now, when a radio station plays music, it pays the songwriters/composers, but not the performers. That’s because the performers are getting free promotion by getting their songs heard on the radio. As we’ve pointed out, this is really something of a “bailout” for the RIAA, which will get a new stream of cash for something that makes absolutely no sense in an open market. Historically, record labels have always been known to (often illegally) pay the radio stations to play music. That’s because they knew, quite explicitly, that there’s value in having their music played.
But, then, when they started pushing for this new tax, suddenly they amusingly started to claim that radio is “a kind of piracy.” Seriously. However, they then immediately contradicted themselves by then accusing one radio station of illegally not playing their music. Basically, the recording industry is willing to make any argument, no matter how contradictory to get this free money, which they claim they’re entitled to. They say that they need to get paid for music played on the radio at the same time that they’re pushing money the other direction just to get on the air (since they know it’s really a promotion). They say that radio is “pirating” from them, but when a radio station stops playing RIAA music (which should make them happy if it’s really “piracy,”) they accuse them of abusing the airwaves, and demand an FCC investigation. This has been nothing but a blatant attempt by the recording industry to get free money through legislative fiat, and it’s ridiculous that the Commerce Department would support such an effort.
Herman Brood & His Wild Romance - Saturday Night
One of the many Sunday night gigs at The Lyceum...this was 1979!
The Church's Long History of Pedophilia
The Catholic Church’s present scandals may seem horrifyingly new, a development of the late 20th-century. In fact, a pedophilia epidemic was going on during the first decades of Christianity. If only the Catholic hierarchy would address pedophilia with the courage and passion of the Apostle Paul, whom we can probably credit with spreading through Greco-Roman society the idea that this behavior was always evil and should never be tolerated.
There doesn’t seem to be any uncertainty about this crime to be found within the Christian tradition or the mandates of scripture. The hierarchy must take full responsibility for all of the enabling it has done.
In my recent book, Paul Among the People, I explore in detail the first chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. This passage, in which the great evangelist excoriates practitioners of “these things” as unnatural, cruel, rebellious against God and humanity, and deserving death, is widely thought to be about homosexuality in general. But a reading in the context of Paul’s time reveals that his targets were pederasts, as pederasty and its variations were quite common and accepted. It is these acts, not homosexual interest or flirtation or even making out among adults, that Paul is clearly writing of, and his clear concern is the aggressors’ exploitation of the young and vulnerable. Not only was sexual penetration of juveniles painful and humiliating (as it always is), but in this society it placed a gristly stigma on the passive male partner. You wouldn’t do this to someone you cared about—only to a strange youngster with no one to protect him.
A seduced boy risked losing his civic rights, and his loss of reputation would be life-long. He would remain a “faggot,” though no one would dare profess a nonviolent sexual interest in him. Boys alone were worth courting. The active sexual partner got off scot-free to flaunt his aggressive “manliness.”
In poetry, scores of such men boasted, under their own names, of infiltrating schools, bribing boys, and throwing away their conquests once these grew body hair. Where citizen-class boys with protective parents were concerned, these tales are not believable, and are probably about as factual as the average letter to the Penthouse Forum. Slave boys, in contrast, must have found themselves on the wrong end of a turkey shoot. They had no rights and no escape; effective compassion for them was unheard of. One pedophile insouciantly published the following:
If you were still uninitiated in what I’m trying to persuade you to do, you’d be right to be afraid, perhaps expecting something terrible. But since your master’s bed has made you an expert, why do you begrudge someone else what you’ve got? Your lord calls you in when he needs you, then he goes to sleep and lets you go—he doesn’t even share a word with you. But here I can spoil you. You can play as an equal, chatter in confidence, and do other things because you’re asked, not because you’re ordered.
Against this background, Paul’s fury in Romans 1 seems commonsensical. He repeatedly uses the word “injustice” to describe these sex acts. (“Wickedness” is a common mistranslation.) He pours onto the offenders his fiercest insults ever, including the accusation that they “hate God.” The apostle is aflame with the revolutionary notion that everyone matters, that pederasts are not exempt from judgment because they have power and position and customary immunity and think they can impose (because they always have) the entire cost of their acts on the victims: “You have no excuse,” Paul writes, “whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.” Paul was a true follower of Jesus, who had boldly addressed a characteristic abuse of his homeland when he faced the woman caught in adultery: the least powerful person was going to suffer alone for a forbidden act. He made it known that this couldn’t happen; the entire society must re-examine itself.
As modern forensic experience confirms, Paul showed particular insight in directing his most irate moral condemnation at pedophiles. Pedophilia is an addiction feeding not on inanimate things but on the most vulnerable human bodies and personalities. Unlike a drug user or alcoholic, this kind of addict doesn’t destroy himself but is sturdy and ready for more into old age. Pedophilia challenges any belief in salvation through human agency alone, because not even the most expert therapy seems to prevent recidivism. As Paul no doubt recognized, God alone understands pedophilia. We are far out of line in thinking that we can usefully tinker with or rationalize such an evil thing, or that we can in any other way deny hard and humble responsibilities to the weak that God has given us in allowing such an evil thing to exist.
The Catholic hierarchy has denied these responsibilities, and quite clownishly. It has not only sent confessed pedophiles on brief retreats, as if in the conviction that lazy good intentions are enough. It has also, in the realm of homosexuality, directed its most energetic policy enforcement against a class of people Paul had nothing to say about because he could not have imagined their existence: men in committed, exclusive sexual relationships who are trying to set up homes together with public recognition. What makes them a priority for censure?
I don’t want to suggest that homosexuality is a straightforward issue for any church to deal with; presumptions about how doctrine and practice should turn out are not religious; they are simply political, and not worth much. But is it not absurd for bishops, cardinals, and popes to strengthen the barricades against gay couples (whose wrongdoing is in much dispute) while leaving the victims of a plainly abominable crime to fend for themselves—if not bullying them, shaming them, and manipulating them?
There doesn’t seem to be any uncertainty about this crime to be found within the Christian tradition or the mandates of scripture. The hierarchy must take full responsibility for all of the enabling it has done. If not, perhaps it’s time for an object lesson. The Western rule of law rose primarily out of a Christian distaste for the rule of human self-interest and whim, as opposed to transcendent and enduring principle. Clergy who pressured molestation victims into signing secrecy agreements may need to go to jail for obstruction of justice, like anyone else.
Sarah Ruden @'Daily Beast'
All those years ago...
I used to squat in this building...about 1981/2!
Quelch House in Tufnell Park!
Forgot about this until I got reminded about it thru old friends...
Hello to Mark and Jo!!!
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