Sunday 22 August 2010
WikiLeak's Official Statement:
Allegations against WikiLeaks founder and spokesperson Julian Assange
On Saturday 21st of August, we have been made aware of rape allegations made against Julian Assange, founder of this project and one of our spokespeople.
We are deeply concerned about the seriousness of these allegations. We the people behind WikiLeaks think highly of Julian and and he has our full support.
While Julian is focusing on his defenses and clearing his name, WikiLeaks will be continuing its regular operations.
The WikiLeaks team
We are deeply concerned about the seriousness of these allegations. We the people behind WikiLeaks think highly of Julian and and he has our full support.
While Julian is focusing on his defenses and clearing his name, WikiLeaks will be continuing its regular operations.
The WikiLeaks team
Saturday 21 August 2010
The Black Dog - DJ Head Kick Mix
01. Cio D'or - Seide (Tränensalz) - Prologue
02. Lucy & Ercolino - GMORK Dadub Tool - Stroboscopic Artefacts
03. Dinky - Anemik - Wagon Repair
04. Paco Osuna - Looking For V2 - PLUS 8
05. Mark Archer - I Said Funky - DS93
06. DNCN - Kitchener - Dust Science
07. Alec Troniq - I M The Foolaloof (Timsusa Vs Janyang Rmx) - Broque
08. Sebrok - Brother, What Time Is It - Paso Music
09. Carl Craig - Darkness - Planet E
10. The Black Dog - CCTV Nation (Slam Remix) - Soma
11. Iori - Dial - Prologue
12. Silent Servant - (Regis Edit) - Sandwell District
13. Terence Fixmer - Electric City - Electric Deluxe
14. Pig & Dan - Organix - Cocoon Recordings
15. Mihalis Safras - There Is A Place (Harvey McKay Remix) - Material Series
16. Carl Taylor - DS27 - Dust Science
Download @'The Black Dogma'
Legal high drugs to be banned immediately
Ministers have become highly concerned about the increasing popularity of so-called legal high substances, and have been frustrated by their inability to halt their arrival and sale in the UK.
This week the legal high substance Ivory Wave was blamed for the death of chef Michael Bishton, 24, whose body was found in the sea in Whitecliff Bay, near Bembridge, Isle of Wight, on Saturday.
Currently the Home Office’s advisers on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs have to consider the danger of a drug before it can be banned.
However, this process is seen as too unwieldy. Instead, under the changes, ministers will be able to ban legal high drugs temporarily, while the advisory council meets to discuss a permanent ban.
Tougher penalties will also be brought in, with suppliers facing 14 years in prison and an unlimited fine if they are caught with a legal high substance which has been banned temporarily.
However there will no penalties for anyone caught in possession to “prevent the unnecessary criminalisation of the young”, the Home Office said.
James Brokenshire, the Crime Prevention minister, said: “The drugs market is changing and we need to adapt current laws to allow us to act more quickly.
“The temporary ban allows us to act straight away to stop new substances gaining a foothold in the market and help us tackle unscrupulous drug dealers trying to get round the law by peddling dangerous chemicals to young people.
“Anyone tempted to try a legal high must understand it is not safe or sensible to take a substance when you do not know what it is or what is in it - especially when some are claimed to be pond cleaner or bath salts.”
The new powers are expected to be in place by the end of the year, when an amendment is tabled in Parliament to the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act.
Under the proposals, police will be able to confiscate suspected substances and the UK Border Agency will seize shipments entering the country.
Earlier this month it emerged that six people were admitted to hospital in Cumbria after it was believed they had used the latest legal high drug Ivory Wave.
The drug - openly on sale for £15 a packet and labelled as "soothing" bath salts – is said to be more dangerous than mephedrone, known as "miaow miaow".
That drug, which was sold as “plant food”, was banned in April after it was linked to up to 26 deaths.
Tim Hollis, the lead on drugs policy at the Association of Chief Police Officers, said it welcomed plans to introduce temporary bans on legal highs.
He said: “All too often people think that just because a product is legal, it is safe. However the make-up of these substances is often unknown and can be dangerous.
“The emphasis is clearly on public safety. Police will continue to focus our enforcement on those who import and deal in these drugs. We also look forward to contributing to the Government’s drugs policy consultation.”
Giving evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee last month, Home Secretary Theresa May said legal highs were the "next battle" in the fight against drugs.
Christopher Hope @'The Telegraph'
vaughanbell 'Legal highs' to be banned immediately as they appear in the UK. http://is.gd/esyyt
It's like having Monty Python in power.
It's like having Monty Python in power. 
ggreenwald Kudos to @SeanPaulKelley -a harsh critic of WikiLeaks' non-redacted disclosures- for re-considering in light of evidence: http://is.gd/esl4f
Brits in the Big Apple!
New York is home to some 120,000 English men and women - including photographer Jason Bell. Inspired by the sheer number of British-born people who live there, he tracked down some of better known faces, but also others who do their 'day jobs' in The Big Apple.
His photographic results - published in a new book 'An Englishman in New York' - are on display at the National Portrait Gallery in London. BBC Radio 4's magazine programme Broadcasting House travelled to the US - and caught up with Jason, and some of his subjects.
An Englishman in New York: Photographs by Jason Bell' can be seen at the National Portrait Gallery, London, until 17 April 2011.
Jason Bell can be heard on BBC Radio 4's Broadcasting House, on Sunday 22 August from 0900 BST.
All photographs copyright Jason Bell. Music by Sting.
Related links
Video protects girls from the negative effects of looking at ultra-thin models
'No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted' - that's the concluding catchphrase of a one-minute video called 'evolution' made by Dove a few years ago to show how cosmetics and computer trickery are used to create the unrealistic portrayals of female models on advertising billboards. Now a team of researchers at the University of the West of England, led by Emma Halliwell, have tested whether viewing this short video can buffer young girls against the negative effects of looking at images of ultra-thin female models. Past research found such a benefit when adult women viewed a similar video but this is the first time the idea has been investigated with young girls.
One hundred and twenty-seven girls, aged ten to thirteen, from two schools in the South of England, were recruited for what they thought was an evaluation of 'attitudes to health, appearance and magazines'. In keeping with the cover story, tests of body satisfaction and esteem were embedded among other questionnaires to try to conceal the true purpose of the study.
Consistent with past research, girls who looked at thin models subsequently reported lower body satisfaction and confidence compared with girls who looked at pictures of landscapes. The key finding was that this negative effect was not seen among the girls who watched the Dove video first, before looking at the ultra-thin models. The body self-esteem and confidence of these girls was just the same as among girls who watched the video and then looked at pictures of landscapes.
'Theoretically, we assume that the intervention disrupted the upward social comparisons that many young girls make when viewing idealised media images,' the researchers concluded. 'Moreover, we propose that the comparison is avoided because the media models have been construed as artificial and, therefore, an inappropriate comparison target.' Halliwell and her team added that future research will be needed to test the truth of this reasoning and also to test whether the benefits of watching the evolution video, or others like it, can be sustained over time.
One hundred and twenty-seven girls, aged ten to thirteen, from two schools in the South of England, were recruited for what they thought was an evaluation of 'attitudes to health, appearance and magazines'. In keeping with the cover story, tests of body satisfaction and esteem were embedded among other questionnaires to try to conceal the true purpose of the study.
Consistent with past research, girls who looked at thin models subsequently reported lower body satisfaction and confidence compared with girls who looked at pictures of landscapes. The key finding was that this negative effect was not seen among the girls who watched the Dove video first, before looking at the ultra-thin models. The body self-esteem and confidence of these girls was just the same as among girls who watched the video and then looked at pictures of landscapes.
'Theoretically, we assume that the intervention disrupted the upward social comparisons that many young girls make when viewing idealised media images,' the researchers concluded. 'Moreover, we propose that the comparison is avoided because the media models have been construed as artificial and, therefore, an inappropriate comparison target.' Halliwell and her team added that future research will be needed to test the truth of this reasoning and also to test whether the benefits of watching the evolution video, or others like it, can be sustained over time.
Friday 20 August 2010
Can an 11-year-old be a sex offender?
To tell it one way, on Wednesday, a British judge let the two accused sexual assailants of an 8-year-old girl go free. Or to put it another way, a pair of little boys have been put on trial for their innocent curiosity, and now carry the stigma of being registered sex offenders. In this story, nobody wins.
Later, under intense questioning, she said she had lied about being raped, but that she had been "naughty," and that she had been afraid to tell her mother. Attorneys in the case described it as a game of "show me yours and I will show you mine." In her testimony, the girl said she had not been penetrated, and there was no forensic evidence to suggest she had been.
The boys, who now have the distinction of being Britain's youngest registered sex offenders, received three years probation. They will be supervised, and work with social workers who will "train, guide and educate" them. In handing down the sentence, the judge said, "The jury decided that you did something very wrong which if you had been older would have very serious consequences for you. But you are very young and while I do not accept what happened was a game, I do accept that you didn’t realize how serious what you were doing was."
5 Ways To Download Torrents Anonymously
With anti-piracy outfits and dubious law-firms policing BitTorrent swarms at an increasing rate, many Bittorrent users are looking for ways to hide their identities from the outside world. To accommodate this demand we’ll give an overview of 5 widely used privacy services.
With an increasing number of BitTorrent users seeking solutions to hide their identities from the outside world, privacy services have seen a spike in customers recently. Below we’ve listed some of the most-used services that allow BitTorrent users to hide their IP-addresses from the public.
The services discussed in this post range from totally free to costing several dollars a month. The general rule is that free services are generally slower or have other restrictions, while paid ones can get you the same speeds as your regular connection would.
VPN (paid / free)
Hundreds and thousands of BitTorrent users have already discovered that a VPN is a good way to ensure privacy while using BitTorrent. For a few dollars a month VPNs route all your traffic through their servers, hiding your IP address from the public. Some VPNs also offer a free plan, but these are significantly slower and not really suited for more demanding BitTorrent users.
Unlike the other services listed in this article, VPNs are not limited to just BitTorrent traffic, they will also conceal the source of all the other traffic on your connection too. Ipredator, Itshidden and StrongVPN are popular among BitTorrent users, but a Google search should find dozens more. It is recommended to ask beforehand if BitTorrent traffic is permitted on the service of your choice.
BTGuard (paid)
BTGuard is a proxy service that hides the IP-addresses of its users from the public. The service works on Windows, Mac, Linux and as the name already suggests, it is set up specifically with BitTorrent users in mind. Besides using the pre-configured client, users can also set up their own client to work with BTGuard. It works with all clients that support “Socks V5″ proxies including uTorrent and Vuze. In addition, BTGuard also includes encryption tunnel software for the real security purists.
After these words of praise we’re obligated to disclose that BTGuard is operated by friends of TorrentFreak, but we think that should be interpreted as a recommendation.
TorrentPrivacy (paid)
Torrentprivacy is another proxy service for BitTorrent users, very similar to that of BTGuard. It offers a modified uTorrent client that has all the necessary settings pre-configured. The downside to this approach is that it is limited to users on Windows platforms. TorrentPrivacy is operated by the TorrentReactor.net team and has been in business for more than two years.
Anomos (free)
“Anomos is a pseudonymous, encrypted multi-peer-to-peer file distribution protocol. It is based on the peer/tracker concept of BitTorrent in combination with an onion routing anonymization layer, with the added benefit of end-to-end encryption,” is how the Anomos team describes its project.
Anomos is one of the few free multi-platform solutions for BitTorrent users to hide their IP-addresses. The downside is that it’s not fully compatible with regular torrent files as Anomos uses its own atorrent format. Another drawback is that the download speeds are generally lower than regular BitTorrent transfers.
On the uTorrent Idea Bank, more than 1,600 people have asked for the Anomos protocol to be built in to a future uTorrent build, making it the second most-popular suggestion overall.
Seedbox (paid)
A seedbox is BitTorrent jargon for a dedicated high-speed server, used exclusively for torrent transfers. With a seedbox users generally get very high download speeds while their IP-addresses are not shared with the public. Once a download is finished users can download the files to their PC through a fast http connection. FileShareFreak periodically reviews several good seedbox providers.
Ernesto @'Torrent Freak'
Richmond Fontaine's Willy Vlautin on RN's 'The Book Show' 13-08-10
Illustration: Nate Beaty
Music has been a strong creative influence in Willy Vlautin's life. He's a singer songer-writer in the alternative-country music band Richmond Fontaine. It was music that made him start writing fiction and he's written three novels: Motel Life, Northline and Lean on Pete.
For Off the Shelf though, Willy Vlautin tells what books have shaped him:
Ironweed by William Kennedy
The Death of Jim Loney by James Welch
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
Pick-up by Charles Willeford
Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver
Get it
exilestreet Sound advice from son#2 To all those voting Greens: I fully support them but vote ALP just so the Libs don't get in. #ausvotes
Don't Drink The Water
Illustration by Emmanuel Romeuf
Andy Roberts’s feature on LSD in the water supply (‘Reservoir Drugs’) described the CIA’s obsession with this type of threat in the 1950s and the scare stories about hippies dumping drugs in reservoirs and similar media reports. I’d like to go back a bit and fill in the gap on the CIA’s own interests. The huge quantities of LSD needed might have meant that spiking water supplies was absurdly impractical… but a little thing like that didn’t stop the world’s favourite spy agency.
In the early 1950s, the CIA approached the Sandoz laboratories in Switzerland, the company that had patented LSD, and requested 10 kilos of the stuff. They were politely informed that the total production only amounted to 10g, enough for some 40,000 doses, but far less than the Agency wanted. The CIA bought what it could from Sandoz, and used some of it in the notorious MK-ULTRA programme. Among other things, the programme explored the effect of LSD on unwitting subjects by spiking drinks at parties. But the idea of using gigantic quantities had not been abandoned.
Dr Jim Ketchum was involved in the US Army’s programme for testing the military effectiveness of a whole range of psychedelic chemicals. He entered his office as Department Chief one Monday morning in 1969 and found a black steel barrel, a bit like an oil drum, in the corner. [1] The military does not always explain everything, and Dr Ketchum assumed there was a good reason for this unusual addition to the furniture. However, after a couple of days he became curious. He waited until everyone else in the building had gone home one evening and opened the lid.
The barrel was filled with sealed glass canisters “like cookie jars”. He took one out to inspect it; the label indicated that the jar contained three pounds of pure EA 1729. This wouldn’t mean much to most people, but to anyone working in this field the code was instantly familiar. Substances were given EA designations from the Army’s Edgewood Arsenal; EA 1729 is the military designation for LSD. The other glass canisters were the same, perhaps 14 of them in all. This was enough acid for several hundred million doses with, Ketchum estimated, a street value of over a billion dollars.
Some wild ideas about what to do next flitted through his mind, but in the event he simply sealed the barrel up again. By the Friday morning it had vanished as mysteriously as it arrived...
Continue reading
David Hambling @'Fortean Times'
Inebriation
...about a man who specializes in "a very specific type of insobriety - unconscious insobriety."
Drug addict benefit withdrawal considered
People dependent on drugs and alcohol who refuse treatment could have their welfare benefits withdrawn under plans being considered by the Home Office.
The idea is in a consultation paper on the government's drug strategy for England, Wales and Scotland.
The proposals also suggest that addicts on benefits should not be required to seek work while receiving treatment.
Some experts have suggested that withdrawing benefits could lead addicts into crime and prostitution.
The Labour government intended to carry out pilot schemes this year to get drug users into work.
Under the plans, addicts who failed to attend a treatment awareness programme would lose welfare benefits.
However, in May the Social Security Advisory Committee - an independent statutory body - said withdrawing benefits from drug users would lead them into crime and prostitution.
The coalition government scrapped the pilot programme - but the Home Office has now revived the idea.
It asks for views on whether there should be some form of "financial benefit sanction" for claimants who do not take action to address their drug or alcohol dependency.
The Home Office has also confirmed plans to give ministers the power to ban new substance for a year until they have been properly assessed in a bid to combat so-called "legal highs".
Minister for Crime Prevention James Brokenshire said: "The drugs market is changing and we need to adapt current laws to allow us to act more quickly.
"The temporary ban allows us to act straight away to stop new substances gaining a foothold in the market and help us tackle unscrupulous drug dealers trying to get round the law by peddling dangerous chemicals to young people.
25 Tracks: A dubstep chronology By Eighteen
As part of Drowned In Sound's 'Subliminal Transmissions' week, 25 Tracks is an attempt to put together a mix that encompasses as many of dubstep’s myriad shifts as possible over the course of an hour. It’s never going to be comprehensive, and there are doubtless gaping holes where individual artists and sounds ought to be, but the aim is to provide a mostly chronological map of its development – all the way from the dark garage of El-B and Horsepower Productions to the many hybrid forms battling for attention today.
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