Top Tours 2010

Worldwide:

1. Bon Jovi $201 million
2. AC/DC $177 million
3. U2 ($160.9 million)
4. Lady Gaga ($133.6 million)
5. Metallica ($110.1 million)
6. Michael Bublé ($104.2 million)
7. “Walking With Dinosaurs” ($104.1 million)
8. Paul McCartney ($93 million)
9. Eagles ($93.3 million)
10. Roger Waters $89.5 million

source

North America:

1. Bon Jovi $108 million
2. Roger Waters $89.5 million
3. Dave Matthews Band ($72.9 million)
4. Paul McCartney ($61.8 million)
5. Michael Bublé ($65.7 million)
6. Eagles ($64.5 million)
7. Lady Gaga ($51 million)
8. James Taylor / Carole King ($50.7 million)
9. The Black Eyed Peas ($50.5 million)
10. John Mayer ($49.9 million)

source

btw, who the fuck is Dave Matthews?

Hackers make a mockery of Australian government security

Thank you Wikileaks

Former CIA Spook Calls for “Covert” Action Against Assange

HA!

(Thanx Mark!)

Mark Lanegan Band (Live 2004)

 

WLiability?

Israel Shamir

The Minsk Election in a Wikileaks Mirror

Gazan youth issue manifesto to vent their anger with all sides in the conflict

"Fuck Hamas. Fuck Israel. Fuck Fatah. Fuck UN. Fuck UNWRA. Fuck USA! We, the youth in Gaza, are so fed up with Israel, Hamas, the occupation, the violations of human rights and the indifference of the international community!
"We want to scream and break this wall of silence, injustice and indifference like the Israeli F16s breaking the wall of sound; scream with all the power in our souls in order to release this immense frustration that consumes us because of this fucking situation we live in...
"We are sick of being caught in this political struggle; sick of coal-dark nights with airplanes circling above our homes; sick of innocent farmers getting shot in the buffer zone because they are taking care of their lands; sick of bearded guys walking around with their guns abusing their power, beating up or incarcerating young people demonstrating for what they believe in; sick of the wall of shame that separates us from the rest of our country and keeps us imprisoned in a stamp-sized piece of land; sick of being portrayed as terrorists, home-made fanatics with explosives in our pockets and evil in our eyes; sick of the indifference we meet from the international community, the so-called experts in expressing concerns and drafting resolutions but cowards in enforcing anything they agree on; we are sick and tired of living a shitty life, being kept in jail by Israel, beaten up by Hamas and completely ignored by the rest of the world.
"There is a revolution growing inside of us, an immense dissatisfaction and frustration that will destroy us unless we find a way of canalising this energy into something that can challenge the status quo and give us some kind of hope.
"We barely survived the Operation Cast Lead, where Israel very effectively bombed the shit out of us, destroying thousands of homes and even more lives and dreams. During the war we got the unmistakable feeling that Israel wanted to erase us from the face of the Earth. During the last years, Hamas has been doing all they can to control our thoughts, behaviour and aspirations. Here in Gaza we are scared of being incarcerated, interrogated, hit, tortured, bombed, killed. We cannot move as we want, say what we want, do what we want.
"ENOUGH! Enough pain, enough tears, enough suffering, enough control, limitations, unjust justifications, terror, torture, excuses, bombings, sleepless nights, dead civilians, black memories, bleak future, heart-aching present, disturbed politics, fanatic politicians, religious bullshit, enough incarceration! WE SAY STOP! This is not the future we want! We want to be free. We want to be able to live a normal life. We want peace. Is that too much to ask?"
More @'The Guardian'

Why EL PAÍS chose to publish the leaks

Ringing the changes: WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks, Open Information and Effective Use: Exploring the Limits of Open Government

Myra MacPherson: Of Assange, I.F. Stone, Secrecy and, Last, Sex

Master At Play

When Shigeru Miyamoto was a child, he didn’t really have any toys, so he made his own, out of wood and string. He put on performances with homemade puppets and made cartoon flip-books. He pretended that there were magical realms hidden behind the sliding shoji screens in his family’s little house. There was no television. His parents were of modest means but hardly poor. This was in the late nineteen-fifties and early nineteen-sixties, in the rural village of Sonobe, about thirty miles northwest of Kyoto, in a river valley surrounded by wooded mountains. As he got older, he wandered farther afield, on foot or by bike. He explored a bamboo forest behind the town’s ancient Shinto shrine and bushwhacked through the cedars and pines on a small mountain near the junior high school. One day, when he was seven or eight, he came across a hole in the ground. He peered inside and saw nothing but darkness. He came back the next day with a lantern and shimmied through the hole and found himself in a small cavern. He could see that passageways led to other chambers. Over the summer, he kept returning to the cave to marvel at the dance of the shadows on the walls.

Miyamoto has told variations on the cave story a few times over the years, in order to emphasize the extent to which he was surrounded by nature, as a child, and also to claim his youthful explorations as a source of his aptitude and enthusiasm for inventing and designing video games. The cave has become a misty but indispensable part of his legend, to Miyamoto what the cherry tree was to George Washington, or what LSD is to Steve Jobs. It is also a prototype, an analogue, and an apology—an illuminating and propitious way to consider his games, or, for that matter, anyone else’s. It flatters a vacant-eyed kid with a joystick (to say nothing of the grownups who have bought it for him or sold it to him) to think of himself, spiritually, as an intrepid spelunker. The cave, certainly, is an occasion for easy irony: the man who has perhaps done more than any other person to entice generations of children to spend their playtime indoors, in front of a video screen, happened to develop his peculiar talent while playing outdoors, at whatever amusements or mischief he could muster. Of course, no one in the first wave of video-game designers could have learned the craft by playing video games, since video games didn’t exist until people like Miyamoto invented them. Still, there may be no starker example of the conversion of primitive improvisations into structured, commodified, and stationary technological simulation than that of Miyamoto, the rural explorer turned ludic mastermind...

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Nick Paumgarten @'The New Yorker'

In Memorium

Nigel Pickup (8)
Robert Carrigan (13)
Peter Easton (13)
Ian Hunter (14)
Donald Sutherland (14)
Mason Phillips (14)
Brian Todd (14)
Martin Paiton (14)
Russell Morgan (14)
David McGhee (14)
Robert Maxwell (15)
Richard Bark (15)
Walter Shields (15)
George Wilson (15)
Douglas Morrison (15)
Thomas Grant (16)
Francis Dover (16)
John Jeffrey (16)
Russell Malcolm (16)
Robert Mulholland (16)
Brian Hutchinson (16)
Thomas Stirling (16)
Alexander Orr (16)
Thomas Melville (17)
Thomas McRobbie (17)
Duncan McBrearty (17)
William Somerhill (17)
Robert Cairns (17)
Margaret Ferguson (18)
John Semple (18)
Andrew Lindsay (18)
James Mair (19)
James Rae (19)
James Trainer (20)
Charles Stirling (20)
Ian Frew (21)
George Findlay (21)
Robert Grant (21)
George Irwin (22)
David Duff (23)
John McLeay (23)
John Crawford (23)
James McGovern (24)
Robert Rae (25)
Peter Farris (26)
James Sibbald (28)
Richard McLeay (28)
Alex McIntyre (29)
John Neil (29)
Charles Livingston (30)
Donald McPhearson (30)
William Shaw (30)
Peter Wright (31)
Charles Dougan (31)
John Buchanan (31)
John Gardiner (32)
Thomas Dickson (32)
Hugh Addie (33)
Walter Raeburn (36)
Robert McAdam (36)
James Grey (37)
George Smith (40)
Adam Henderson (42)
George Adams (43)
David Anderson (45)
Matthew Reid (49)

YNWA 

@'AnfieldRoad'

The incredible shrinking sound bite

Egyptian President Condemns Deadly Explosion Outside Church in Alexandria

Eyewitnesses say at least 21 people have been killed and scores wounded in a suicide bombing attack at a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria, Egypt. Tensions between Christians and Muslims have been on the rise in Egypt and nearby Iraq following recent threats by the al-Qaida terrorist group.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak denounced the explosion at a Coptic church in the port city of Alexandria overnight, calling on Christians and Muslims to unite in confronting such acts of terrorism.
He says that this act of terrorism points to the involvement of foreign gangs that wish to turn Egypt into a terrorist playground in the region. He warns that he and the Egyptian people will stop these forces from carrying out their plots to destabilize the country and destroy the cohesion and unity of its people. The plotters, he adds, will ultimately be captured and punished.
People inside All Saints Coptic church began screaming after the initial blast, as a priest urged them to stay calm. The New Year's eve midnight mass had just drawn to a close and worshippers were preparing to leave. Many of those who began leaving early were either killed or wounded.
 Firemen doused the flames after the blast while friends and rescue workers ferried the wounded to local hospitals.
A heavy set man who was burned across his face explains what happened, saying he was leaving the church when he felt a massive explosion. He said he was dazed by the force of the blast and woke up in the hospital.
The Egyptian Interior Ministry issued a statement saying the explosion was caused by a suicide bomber although several eyewitnesses claim a car bomb was responsible for the blast.
Other eyewitnesses say angry Coptic Christians tried to attack a mosque across from the church after the explosion and that fights broke out, causing more casualties. Al-Arabiya TV showed a crowd of mostly young Coptic men waving their fists and shouting as police intervened.
The local TV news channel, Nile News, reported that despite the angry reactions of many people, dozens of ordinary Egyptians rushed to area hospitals to donate blood for victims of the blast...

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Edward Yeranian @'Voice of America'

♪♫ Junoon - Sayonee

The old man of the mountain returns

Power corrupts, but it corrupts only those who think they deserve it

@'xkcd'

It doesn't move

via

Men With a Gun #1

via

mathematicsprof Enjoy this year since the next prime year that is the sum of 11 consecutive primes is 2141 = 167+173+179+181+191+193+197+199+211+223+227

Doug Wimbish, Charles Shaar Murray, Richard Williams and Simon Reynolds discuss Hendrix (1990)

One minute's silence to mark Ibrox stadium disaster

As a an 11 year old in Glasgow at the time I unfortunately remember this day all too well!

Detroit In Ruins

@'The Guardian'
Unfortunately Julian Temple's wonderful film 'Requiem For Detroit' appears to no longer be online, but this is frightening reading.

Bradley Manning/Wikileaks Timeline

HERE

@'Tastefully Offensive'

How WikiLeaks Enlightened Us in 2010

WikiLeaks: Who Helped Shape Julian Assange?

Henry David Thoreau: On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849)

An argument that people should not permit governments to overrule their consciences, and that people have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. (Original title: Resistance to Civil Government)
DOWNLOAD

Radio People

Radio People is the latest project from Ohio-stalwart, Sam Goldberg. After a handful of solo releases under his own name on Weird Forest, 905 Tapes and the Emeralds-run Wagon & Gneiss Things labels, he debuted Radio People on an ultra-limited self-titled cassette on his own Pizza Night imprint. At that point, there was no way back and the only move was to push forward with this new cosmic beast. Two more short-run tapes followed and it was clear that this new chemically imbalanced synthesizer project wasn't just a quick hit one-off. Radio People is here to stay.
On this, his debut vinyl effort, Goldberg has compiled the best elements of those three, long-gone cassettes. This Dubplates & Mastering cut slab of wax is the strongest statement Goldberg has made, proving his talent lies far beyond ambient soundscapes and well into the world of pop-infused synthesizer chaos and kraut-inspired composition. Major hooks sit alongside dense planetary drones. Goldberg pairs rivers of polysynth tracery with deep shards of droning organs, minimal live percussion and a whole host of drum machine backbone. This really is the best of both worlds. Melodies suck you in, beats get your head bobbing and then you're sucked down a complex tonal wormhole of introspective loops and ambient synthscapes.
Pop song frameworks nestle themselves neatly beside somber soundscapes, sometimes jumping back and forth in the same track. Barely-there vocals foil the stasis, leaving the listener guessing and wondering if there's a ghost in the mix. Radio People's embracing of simple kraut rhythms to underscore the catchy, kosmische wanderings give this music an accessibility not present in much of Goldberg's previous work. It crosses boundaries and comes back and shows still untapped wells of talent and ideas in Goldberg's bag of tricks.

Pirate Party Leader Rick Falkvinge Resigns on 5th Anniversary

Five years ago the first Pirate Party was founded in Sweden. In the years that followed the Party shook up the political climate in its home country and the European Parliament where it holds two seats. Now, five years later, founder and chief architect Rickard Falkvinge is stepping down as leader. He will focus on promoting the Pirate position internationally, while Party deputy Anna Troberg will take over the reins.

It has been a long and tumultuous 5 years for the Pirate Party and its leader Rick Falkvinge. Riding on the wave of public protest after Swedish police raided The Pirate Bay’s servers in 2006, the Party soon became a political force to be reckoned with.
The Party gained interest from the mainstream media and at the Swedish general elections in the same year it became the third largest party outside parliament. Inspired by the small successes the Party booked in the first year, Pirate Parties were founded in dozens of other countries as well.
Fast forward three years and the Swedish Pirate Party peaked at over 50,000 members just before the European elections of 2009. In these elections the Pirate Party got more than 7% of the total votes earning them two seats in the European Parliament, a major victory.
Today the Pirate Party looks back on its short history as it celebrates its fifth anniversary. However, this festive day also brings a surprise that nobody saw coming. Rick Falkvinge, Pirate Party icon, founder and leader announced today that he is stepping down as leader. Effective immediately he will be replaced by his deputy, Anna Troberg.
According to Falkvinge, new leadership is what could take the Party to the next level.
“Anna has a cultural background which is precisely what the Pirate Party in Sweden needs at this point,” Falkvinge exclusively told TorrentFreak. “We are well established within the box of technical people, but need to break out of it. To do that, we need a leader who can explain why these issues are important in nontechnical terms. Anna is the perfect fit.” 

However, the former Party leader isn’t hanging up his Pirate hat just yet. He stays on as the Party’s chairman while he broadens his scope. Freed from the political shackles, he will continue to fight for the same issues he’s championed for the last five years, but now more internationally oriented than before.
In the coming year Falkvinge intends to work as an ‘international evangelist’ for the Pirate movement and focus on Information Politics. Part of that will include a guest column here on TorrentFreak, as well as a new English-language blog at Falkvinge.net.
Looking back on the last five years it is impressive to see what the ‘Pirate’ movement started by Falkvinge has accomplished. There are now Pirate Parties in forty countries around the world, with city Councillors in Germany, Luxembourg and the Czech Republic and formerly a member in the German Parliament.
It will be interesting to see how the Parties fare in the coming half-decade, where privacy and technology issues are becoming more relevant than ever before. Meanwhile we congratulate Anna Troberg on her new position and wish her all the best. Rick Falkvinge – the man who made Pirates Political – is saluted for a half-decade of hard work as the Swedish Pirate Party leader.
Ernesto @'Torrent Freak'

Icon

Billy the Kid fails to win pardon

WTF???

14 Fast Food Items Not Available In The U.S. That Should Be 

What Is in Fast Food? A Newly Discovered Reason to Avoid Fast Food

The American Wikileaks Hacker

On July 29th, returning from a trip to Europe, Jacob Appelbaum, a lanky, unassuming 27-year-old wearing a black T-shirt with the slogan "Be the trouble you want to see in the world," was detained at customs by a posse of federal agents. In an interrogation room at Newark Liberty airport, he was grilled about his role in Wikileaks, the whistle-blower group that has exposed the government's most closely guarded intelligence reports about the war in Afghanistan. The agents photocopied his receipts, seized three of his cellphones — he owns more than a dozen — and confiscated his computer. They informed him that he was under government surveillance. They questioned him about the trove of 91,000 classified military documents that Wikileaks had released the week before, a leak that Vietnam-era activist Daniel Ellsberg called "the largest unauthorized disclosure since the Pentagon Papers." They demanded to know where Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, was hiding. They pressed him on his opinions about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Appelbaum refused to answer. Finally, after three hours, he was released. Appelbaum is the only known American member of Wikileaks and the leading evangelist for the software program that helped make the leak possible. In a sense, he's a bizarro version of Mark Zuckerberg: If Facebook's ambition is to "make the world more open and connected," Appelbaum has dedicated his life to fighting for anonymity and privacy. An anarchist street kid raised by a heroin- addict father, he dropped out of high school, taught himself the intricacies of code and developed a healthy paranoia along the way. "I don't want to live in a world where everyone is watched all the time," he says. "I want to be left alone as much as possible. I don't want a data trail to tell a story that isn't true." We have transferred our most intimate and personal information — our bank accounts, e-mails, photographs, phone conversations, medical records — to digital networks, trusting that it's all locked away in some secret crypt. But Appelbaum knows that this information is not safe. He knows, because he can find it...

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Nathaniel Rich @'Rolling Stone'

HA!

Er, can I have my money back please...

REpost: Natasha Veruschka - the 'Queen' of swords

Natasha Veruschka
Natasha currently holds seven world records in sword swallowing including the most swords swallowed by a female (13 twenty two inch long swords) and the longest sword swallowed by a female (twenty seven and a half inches long.)

Alison Van Pelt/WSB 1996

@'Alison Van Pelt Art'

Robert Hood - Live 1994 - 2010

Robert Hood - Lives by Electro-Mix-Memory

Jamaican Anti-Gay 'Murder Music' Heard by Millions in the US

Jamaican dancehall star Buju Banton was considered a musical prodigy in 1988 when, at age 15, he recorded what remains one of his best-known tracks, “Boom Bye Bye.” Even in the difficult-to-decipher Jamaican slang known as patois, its chorus evokes violence and dread: Boom bye bye / inna batty bwoy head / Rude bwoy no promote no nasty man / dem haffi dead. (“Boom [the sound of a gunshot], bye-bye, in a faggot’s head / the tough young guys don’t accept fags; they have to die.”)
For those whose familiarity with Jamaican music begins and ends with Bob Marley, “murder music” — and its stubborn worldwide popularity — will come as a serious shock.
Gay and lesbian activists in Jamaica and throughout the Western world have spent years trying to slow the spread of murder music. The going is tough: Banton, a four-time Grammy nominee who has collaborated with renowned Haitian singer Wyclef Jean and the punk band Rancid, is but first among equals in a genre deeply rooted in Jamaican culture, whose stars include celebrated musicians like Beenie Man, Capleton and Sizzla Kalonji. The top-rated of 86 YouTube videos of Banton performing “Boom Bye Bye” has been viewed an astounding 3,217,409 times since it was posted in 2007.
The Stop Murder Music campaign is an international movement with activists on nearly every continent who urge sponsors to pull funding from offending artists, pressure venues not to book them, and organize boycotts and protests when they perform. Supporters of the musicians “say we’re attacking these artists because they’re homophobic,” said British human rights activist Peter Tatchell, international coordinator of Stop Murder Music. “That’s not true. We’re attacking them because they’re inciting the criminal offenses of violence and murder.”
Something surely is. According to the Jamaica Forum of Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG), Jamaica’s only organization promoting LGBT rights, mobs assaulted at least 98 gay men and lesbians between February and July 2007 alone. Last year, J-FLAG recorded six cases of “corrective rape,” in which men forced themselves on women thought to be lesbians. More recently, in just the month of September, two women were subjected to corrective rape, J-FLAG said. The first was gang-raped by a group of four men; the second was held at knifepoint and raped after being forced to perform oral sex on her attacker.
The source of another oft-repeated statistic, that at least 35 Jamaicans have been killed since 1997 solely for being gay, is unknown; it is commonly but wrongly attributed to Amnesty International. In any case, powerful taboos against gays in Jamaica make compiling accurate statistics on anti-gay hate crimes difficult because victims and their families are afraid to come forward...

 Continue reading

Leah Nelson @'Alternet'

Most Dangerous Year Ever, From Secret Spaceships to Killer Drones

Mona's most played artists of 2010

@'Last FM'

At the Prohibition Bar

♪♫ Screaming Blue Messiahs - Wild Blue Yonder

Damn!

FSecure Starting tomorrow it's illegal to pretend to be someone you're not on Facebook in California http://su.pr/2XNErf

♪♫ Splendid - You only tell me you love me when you're drunk

the song for tonight...

♪♫ Nicolas Jaar - Billie Jean (Nico Rework)

2010, the year that privacy died?

1/1/11

Have Fun, Cause Trouble

The Editors of 'Exile' (seen here on our end of year bonding camp) wish you a great 2011!

XXX

5-4-3-2-1

buon anno
šťastný nový rok
godt nytår

gelukkig nieuwjaar
manigong bagong taon
hyvää uuttavuotta
bonne année
Frohes neues Jahr
ευτυχισμένο το νέο έτος
שנה טובה
नया साल मुबारक हो
selamat tahun baru
happy new year
laimīgu Jauno gadu
laimingų Naujųjų metų
godt nytt år
szczęśliwego nowego roku
с новым годом
feliz año nuevo
gott nytt år
chúc mừng năm mới
كل عام وأنتم بخير