Orbital - Halcyon - Live at Coachella 2024
2 hours ago
Monday 27 June 2011
Outcry in America as pregnant women who lose babies face murder charges
Gibbs became pregnant aged 15, but lost the baby in December 2006 in a stillbirth when she was 36 weeks into the pregnancy. When prosecutors discovered that she had a cocaine habit – though there is no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby's death – they charged her with the "depraved-heart murder" of her child, which carries a mandatory life sentence.
Gibbs is the first woman in Mississippi to be charged with murder relating to the loss of her unborn baby. But her case is by no means isolated. Across the US more and more prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals.
"Women are being stripped of their constitutional personhood and subjected to truly cruel laws," said Lynn Paltrow of the campaign National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW). "It's turning pregnant women into a different class of person and removing them of their rights."
Bei Bei Shuai, 34, has spent the past three months in a prison cell in Indianapolis charged with murdering her baby. On 23 December she tried to commit suicide by taking rat poison after her boyfriend abandoned her.
Shuai was rushed to hospital and survived, but she was 33 weeks pregnant and her baby, to whom she gave birth a week after the suicide attempt and whom she called Angel, died after four days. In March Shuai was charged with murder and attempted foeticide and she has been in custody since without the offer of bail.
In Alabama at least 40 cases have been brought under the state's "chemical endangerment" law. Introduced in 2006, the statute was designed to protect children whose parents were cooking methamphetamine in the home and thus putting their children at risk from inhaling the fumes.
Amanda Kimbrough is one of the women who have been ensnared as a result of the law being applied in a wholly different way. During her pregnancy her foetus was diagnosed with possible Down's syndrome and doctors suggested she consider a termination, which Kimbrough declined as she is not in favour of abortion.
The baby was delivered by caesarean section prematurely in April 2008 and died 19 minutes after birth.
Six months later Kimbrough was arrested at home and charged with "chemical endangerment" of her unborn child on the grounds that she had taken drugs during the pregnancy – a claim she has denied.
"That shocked me, it really did," Kimbrough said. "I had lost a child, that was enough."
She now awaits an appeal ruling from the higher courts in Alabama, which if she loses will see her begin a 10-year sentence behind bars. "I'm just living one day at a time, looking after my three other kids," she said. "They say I'm a criminal, how do I answer that? I'm a good mother."
Women's rights campaigners see the creeping criminalisation of pregnant women as a new front in the culture wars over abortion, in which conservative prosecutors are chipping away at hard-won freedoms by stretching protection laws to include foetuses, in some cases from the day of conception. In Gibbs' case defence lawyers have argued before Mississippi's highest court that her prosecution makes no sense. Under Mississippi law it is a crime for any person except the mother to try to cause an abortion.
"If it's not a crime for a mother to intentionally end her pregnancy, how can it be a crime for her to do it unintentionally, whether by taking drugs or smoking or whatever it is," Robert McDuff, a civil rights lawyer asked the state supreme court.
McDuff told the Guardian that he hoped the Gibbs prosecution was an isolated example. "I hope it's not a trend that's going to catch on. To charge a woman with murder because of something she did during pregnancy is really unprecedented and quite extreme."
He pointed out that anti-abortion groups were trying to amend the Mississippi constitution by setting up a state referendum, or ballot initiative, that would widen the definition of a person under the state's bill of rights to include a foetus from the day of conception.
Some 70 organisations across America have come together to file testimonies, known as amicus briefs, in support of Gibbs that protest against her treatment on several levels. One says that to treat "as a murderer a girl who has experienced a stillbirth serves only to increase her suffering".
Another, from a group of psychologists, laments the misunderstanding of addiction that lies behind the indictment. Gibbs did not take cocaine because she had a "depraved heart" or to "harm the foetus but to satisfy an acute psychological and physical need for that particular substance", says the brief.
Perhaps the most persuasive argument put forward in the amicus briefs is that if such prosecutions were designed to protect the unborn child, then they would be utterly counter-productive: "Prosecuting women and girls for continuing [a pregnancy] to term despite a drug addiction encourages them to terminate wanted pregnancies to avoid criminal penalties. The state could not have intended this result when it adopted the homicide statute."
Paltrow sees what is happening to Gibbs as a small taste of what would be unleashed were the constitutional right to an abortion ever overturned. "In Mississippi the use of the murder statute is creating a whole new legal standard that makes women accountable for the outcome of their pregnancies and threatens them with life imprisonment for murder."
South Carolina was one of the first states to introduce such a foetal homicide law. National Advocates for Pregnant Women has found only one case of a South Carolina man who assaulted a pregnant woman having been charged under its terms, and his conviction was eventually overturned. Yet the group estimates there have been up to 300 women arrested for their actions during pregnancy.
In other states laws designed to protect children against the damaging effects of drugs have similarly been twisted to punish childbearers.
Ed Pilkington @'The Guardian'
N Korean children begging, army starving
Footage shot inside North Korea and obtained by the ABC has revealed the extent of chronic food shortages and malnutrition inside the secretive state.
The video is some of the most revealing footage ever smuggled out of the impoverished North Korean state.Shot over several months by an undercover North Korean journalist, the harrowing footage shows images of filthy, homeless and orphaned children begging for food and soldiers demanding bribes.
The footage also shows North Koreans labouring on a private railway track for the dictator's son and heir near the capital Pyongyang.
Strolling up to the site supervisor, the man with the hidden camera asks what is going on.
"This rail line is a present from Kim Jong-il to comrade Kim Jong-un," he is told.
The well-fed Kim Jong-un could soon be ruling over a nation of starving, impoverished serfs.
The video shows young children caked in filth begging in markets, pleading for scraps from compatriots who have nothing to give.
"I am eight," says one boy. "My father died and my mother left me. I sleep outdoors."
Many of the children are orphans; their parents victims of starvation or the gulag.
But markets do exist - private markets that stock bags of rice, pork, and corn. The state no longer has any rations to hand out.
But the state wants its share of this embryonic capitalism.
In the footage, a party official is demanding a stallholder make a donation of rice to the army.
"My business is not good," complains the stallholder.
"Shut up," replies the official. "Don't offer excuses."
It is clear that the all-powerful army - once quarantined from food shortages and famine - is starting to go hungry.
"Everybody is weak," says one young North Korean soldier. "Within my troop of 100 comrades, half of them are malnourished," he said.
Jiro Ishimaru is the man who trained the undercover reporter to use the hidden camera.
"This footage is important because it shows that Kim Jong-il's regime is growing weak," he said.
"It used to put the military first, but now it can't even supply food to its soldiers. Rice is being sold in markets but they are starving. This is the most significant thing in this video."
Kim Jong-il's grip on power depends on the military and if some of its soldiers have growling, empty bellies, it is bad news for the dictator and his hopes for a smooth transition to his son.
"The priority for Kim Jong-il is the succession," said Mr Ishimaru.
"But Kim Jong-un is still very young, just 27 or 28. He doesn't have any experience and hasn't achieved anything. So opposition to a third generation of the Kim family taking over is growing."
But this dynasty of dictators has proven that it is more than capable of keeping its wretched population in line through gulags, hunger and a total control over every aspect of life.
But as this footage shows, occasionally, a crack of light emerges from this dark, dark place.
Mark Willacy @'ABC'
Self-propelled gut camera swims in your colon
But a team of researchers in Japan recently successfully tested a remote-controlled, self-propelled capsule camera that can examine the human stomach and colon.
Developed by researchers at Ryukoku University, Osaka Medical College, and a private-sector firm, the fish-shaped Mermaid is a 1.7-inch-long, electromagnet-powered capsule with a fin-like tail.
That's longer than a conventional endoscopy capsule, which isn't maneuverable and takes a brute-force approach to capturing images, snapping as many as possible as it descends.
The Mermaid can be precisely maneuvered following oral or rectal insertion, and can take two images per second.
German researchers previously managed to remotely control an endoscope capsule in the stomachs of healthy volunteers. The Japanese team, however, claims to be the first to have moved a remote-controlled capsule inside the colon and captured images there.
The team believes the device could be used to image the entire digestive tract, including the small intestine.
Naotake Otsuka, professor emeritus at Ryukoku University's Faculty of Science and Technology, said he tested the Mermaid himself and had no problems swallowing it.
Now open wide and say "ahhh."
(Via Mainichi Daily News)
Tim Hornyak @'cnet'
Don't Go The F*ck To Jail: An Illustrated Guide To Your Drug-Related Rights
"I've always been interested in drug policy," Cortés explains. "I did a stint on jury duty about two years ago and was actually really impressed with my fellow jurors and their critical thinking about the case. Then I saw that Time article saying 'we will not participate in the machinery of drug war,' and I thought it was amazing. I wanted to keep the ball rolling and talk about this issue more. Particularly in New York, where Bloomberg has had a record number of marijuana arrests, despite his own admittance that he's used and enjoyed the drug..."
Cortés then recounts this tale, which is found in an "author's note" footnote in the pamphlet:
I confronted Bloomberg once at a Gracie Mansion BBQ, where I asked him to reconcile his administration of record marijuana arrests with his own admission of personal use and enjoyment. He hemmed and hawed. I asked why he wouldn’t arrest himself for the past use, and he said “That’s not how the law works.” I said, “So, really you’re just saying ‘I got away with it.’” At that point he said, “You and I have nothing in common,” and walked away from me. True story.Earlier this week, Cortés handed out copies to jurors outside of the Brooklyn Supreme Court, which he plans to do periodically over the next few weeks. The book is available as a free download on Cortés's site, and he'll also be distributing copies of it at this event next month.
Jamie Feldmar @'gothamist'
Björk - Crystalline
“Crystalline” is the first single from Bjork’s Biophilia, the iPad-inspired multi-media LP that will celebrate “how sound works in nature, exploring the infinite expanse of the universe, from planetary systems to atomic structure.”
via
Sunday 26 June 2011
Billy the Kid portrait sells for $2.3 million
The tintype on Saturday evening went to private collector William Koch at Brian Lebel's 22nd Annual Old West Show & Auction, where auction spokeswoman Melissa McCracken said the image of the 1800s outlaw was the most expensive piece ever sold at the event.
A 15 percent fee was added to the bidding price, making the selling price more than $2.6 million. Organizers had expected it could fetch between $300,000 and $400,000.
The tintype is believed to have been taken in 1879 or 1880 in Fort Sumner, N.M. It shows the outlaw dressed in a rumpled hat and layers of clothes, including a bulky sweater. He's standing with one hand resting on a Winchester carbine on his right side and a Colt revolver holstered on his left side.
Tintypes were an early form of photography that used metal plates. They are reverse images, and the Billy the Kid tintype led to the mistaken belief that Billy the Kid was a lefty. The myth inspired the 1958 movie "The Left Handed Gun", starring Paul Newman as Billy.
Billy the Kid gave the image to a friend, Dan Dedrick, and the tintype has been owned by his descendants, the Upham family, ever since. It has only been publicly displayed during the 1980s at a museum in Lincoln County, N.M.
McCracken said it's recognizable around the world as a classic image of the Old West.
"There's only one photo of Billy the Kid, and I think that's why it captivates people's imagination," she said before Saturday's auction.
The tintype was auctioned off along with more than 400 other Western-themed items, including documents from Buffalo Bill's aborted divorce, Native American antiquities, and a painting from Andy Warhol's "Cowboys and Indians" series depicting a Navajo woman with a baby on her back.
Via
The tintype was auctioned off along with more than 400 other Western-themed items, including documents from Buffalo Bill's aborted divorce, Native American antiquities, and a painting from Andy Warhol's "Cowboys and Indians" series depicting a Navajo woman with a baby on her back.
Via
Slow Train To Dawn
Sex, Drugs, Violence & Gore are what's in store for your 30min video mixtape lunch date with IndoorFin, Burroughs, and Cronenberg in the nude.
1. Two Hours Time - Cinnamon Chasers
2. Dreamboat (RAC Remix) - Psychic Powers
3. Climbing Walls - Strange Talk
4. Static On The Wire (RAC Remix) - Holy Ghost!
5. Young Blood (Dave Sitek Remix) - The Naked And Famous
6. Old Age - 13 & God
7. The Truth (Jump Jump Dance Dance Remix) - PNAU
indoorfin.tumblr.com
50 days of Lulz
Friends around the globe,
We are Lulz Security, and this is our final release, as today marks something meaningful to us. 50 days ago, we set sail with our humble ship on an uneasy and brutal ocean: the Internet. The hate machine, the love machine, the machine powered by many machines. We are all part of it, helping it grow, and helping it grow on us.
For the past 50 days we've been disrupting and exposing corporations, governments, often the general population itself, and quite possibly everything in between, just because we could. All to selflessly entertain others - vanity, fame, recognition, all of these things are shadowed by our desire for that which we all love. The raw, uninterrupted, chaotic thrill of entertainment and anarchy. It's what we all crave, even the seemingly lifeless politicians and emotionless, middle-aged self-titled failures. You are not failures. You have not blown away. You can get what you want and you are worth having it, believe in yourself.
While we are responsible for everything that The Lulz Boat is, we are not tied to this identity permanently. Behind this jolly visage of rainbows and top hats, we are people. People with a preference for music, a preference for food; we have varying taste in clothes and television, we are just like you. Even Hitler and Osama Bin Laden had these unique variations and style, and isn't that interesting to know? The mediocre painter turned supervillain liked cats more than we did.
Again, behind the mask, behind the insanity and mayhem, we truly believe in the AntiSec movement. We believe in it so strongly that we brought it back, much to the dismay of those looking for more anarchic lulz. We hope, wish, even beg, that the movement manifests itself into a revolution that can continue on without us. The support we've gathered for it in such a short space of time is truly overwhelming, and not to mention humbling. Please don't stop. Together, united, we can stomp down our common oppressors and imbue ourselves with the power and freedom we deserve. So with those last thoughts, it's time to say bon voyage. Our planned 50 day cruise has expired, and we must now sail into the distance, leaving behind - we hope - inspiration, fear, denial, happiness, approval, disapproval, mockery, embarrassment, thoughtfulness, jealousy, hate, even love. If anything, we hope we had a microscopic impact on someone, somewhere. Anywhere.
Thank you for sailing with us. The breeze is fresh and the sun is setting, so now we head for the horizon.
Let it flow...
Lulz Security - our crew of six wishes you a happy 2011, and a shout-out to all of our battlefleet members and supporters across the globe
Our mayhem: http://lulzsecurity.com/releases/
Our chaos: http://thepiratebay.org/user/LulzSec/
Our final release: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6495523/50_Days_of_Lulz
Please make mirrors of material on the website, because we're not renewing the hosting. Goodbye. <3
Via
We are Lulz Security, and this is our final release, as today marks something meaningful to us. 50 days ago, we set sail with our humble ship on an uneasy and brutal ocean: the Internet. The hate machine, the love machine, the machine powered by many machines. We are all part of it, helping it grow, and helping it grow on us.
For the past 50 days we've been disrupting and exposing corporations, governments, often the general population itself, and quite possibly everything in between, just because we could. All to selflessly entertain others - vanity, fame, recognition, all of these things are shadowed by our desire for that which we all love. The raw, uninterrupted, chaotic thrill of entertainment and anarchy. It's what we all crave, even the seemingly lifeless politicians and emotionless, middle-aged self-titled failures. You are not failures. You have not blown away. You can get what you want and you are worth having it, believe in yourself.
While we are responsible for everything that The Lulz Boat is, we are not tied to this identity permanently. Behind this jolly visage of rainbows and top hats, we are people. People with a preference for music, a preference for food; we have varying taste in clothes and television, we are just like you. Even Hitler and Osama Bin Laden had these unique variations and style, and isn't that interesting to know? The mediocre painter turned supervillain liked cats more than we did.
Again, behind the mask, behind the insanity and mayhem, we truly believe in the AntiSec movement. We believe in it so strongly that we brought it back, much to the dismay of those looking for more anarchic lulz. We hope, wish, even beg, that the movement manifests itself into a revolution that can continue on without us. The support we've gathered for it in such a short space of time is truly overwhelming, and not to mention humbling. Please don't stop. Together, united, we can stomp down our common oppressors and imbue ourselves with the power and freedom we deserve. So with those last thoughts, it's time to say bon voyage. Our planned 50 day cruise has expired, and we must now sail into the distance, leaving behind - we hope - inspiration, fear, denial, happiness, approval, disapproval, mockery, embarrassment, thoughtfulness, jealousy, hate, even love. If anything, we hope we had a microscopic impact on someone, somewhere. Anywhere.
Thank you for sailing with us. The breeze is fresh and the sun is setting, so now we head for the horizon.
Let it flow...
Lulz Security - our crew of six wishes you a happy 2011, and a shout-out to all of our battlefleet members and supporters across the globe
Our mayhem: http://lulzsecurity.com/releases/
Our chaos: http://thepiratebay.org/user/LulzSec/
Our final release: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6495523/50_Days_of_Lulz
Please make mirrors of material on the website, because we're not renewing the hosting. Goodbye. <3
Via
Cronenberg's 'A Dangerous Method' coming soon...
A Dangerous Method is an upcoming historical film, directed by David Cronenberg and starring Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley and Vincent Cassel. The screenplay was adapted by Academy Award-winning writer Christopher Hampton from his 2002 stage play The Talking Cure, itself based on the 1993 non-fiction book by John Kerr, A Most Dangerous Method.
The film marks the third collaboration between Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen (after A History of Violence and Eastern Promises). This is also the third film British film producer Jeremy Thomas has made with Cronenberg, after together completing the William Burroughs adaptation Naked Lunch and the J.G. Ballard adaptation Crash. A Dangerous Method was a German/Canadian co-production.
PLOT : Set on the eve of the World War I, A Dangerous Method is based on the turbulent relationships between fledgling psychiatrist Carl Jung, his mentor Sigmund Freud, and Sabina Spielrein, the troubled but beautiful young woman who comes between them.
CAST :
Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud
Michael Fassbender as Carl Jung
Keira Knightley as Sabina Spielrein
Vincent Cassel as Otto Gross
Sarah Gadon as Emma Jung
The film marks the third collaboration between Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen (after A History of Violence and Eastern Promises). This is also the third film British film producer Jeremy Thomas has made with Cronenberg, after together completing the William Burroughs adaptation Naked Lunch and the J.G. Ballard adaptation Crash. A Dangerous Method was a German/Canadian co-production.
PLOT : Set on the eve of the World War I, A Dangerous Method is based on the turbulent relationships between fledgling psychiatrist Carl Jung, his mentor Sigmund Freud, and Sabina Spielrein, the troubled but beautiful young woman who comes between them.
CAST :
Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud
Michael Fassbender as Carl Jung
Keira Knightley as Sabina Spielrein
Vincent Cassel as Otto Gross
Sarah Gadon as Emma Jung
Japan's 'throwaway' nuclear workers
Then, as now, a small army of transient workers was put to work to try to stem the damage at the oldest nuclear reactor run by Japan's largest utility.
At the time, workers were racing to finish an unprecedented repair to address a dangerous defect: cracks in the drum-like steel assembly known as the "shroud" surrounding the radioactive core of the reactor.
But in 1997, the effort to save the 21-year-old reactor from being scrapped at a large loss to its operator, Tokyo Electric, also included a quiet effort to skirt Japan's safety rules: foreign workers were brought in for the most dangerous jobs, a manager of the project said.
"It's not well known, but I know what happened," Kazunori Fujii, who managed part of the shroud replacement in 1997, told Reuters. "What we did would not have been allowed under Japanese safety standards."
The previously undisclosed hiring of welders from the United States and Southeast Asia underscores the way Tokyo Electric, a powerful monopoly with deep political connections in Japan, outsourced its riskiest work and developed a lax safety culture in the years leading to the Fukushima disaster, experts say.
A 9.0 earthquake on March 11 triggered a 15-meter tsunami that smashed into the seaside Fukushima Daiichi plant and set off a series of events that caused its reactors to start melting down.
Hydrogen explosions scattered debris across the complex and sent up a plume of radioactive steam that forced the evacuation of more than 80,000 residents near the plant, about 240 km (150 miles) northeast of Tokyo. Enough radioactive water to fill 40 Olympic swimming pools has also been collected at the plant and threatens to leak into the groundwater.
The repeated failures that have dogged Tokyo Electric in the three months the Fukushima plant has been in crisis have undercut confidence in the response to the disaster and dismayed outside experts, given corporate Japan's reputation for relentless organization.
Hastily hired workers were sent into the plant without radiation meters. Two splashed into radioactive water wearing street shoes because rubber boots were not available. Even now, few have been given training on radiation risks that meets international standards, according to their accounts and the evaluation of experts...
BBC attacked over coverage of 'misleading' methadone report
The charity DrugScope has written to the corporation complaining about its coverage of a report by a rightwing thinktank, the Centre for Policy Studies, that warned the prescription of the heroin substitute methadone was "entrenching addiction".
The report, Breaking the Habit, said prescribing addicts with methadone had been an expensive failure and claimed there were 320,000 problem drug users on benefits, costing the taxpayer billions of pounds.
The row has highlighted the increasingly polarised nature of the debate on treatment for heroin addicts. Last year the prime minister, David Cameron, described methadone as "a government-authorised form of opium".
The centre's report claims there are as many addicts today as there were in 2004-05. It notes: "Fewer than 4% of addicts emerge from treatment free from dependency. Drug deaths have continued to rise."
The thinktank suggested that instead of prescribing methadone, greater success would be achieved by funding small rehabilitation units that would encourage abstinence on a payment by results basis. Its hard-hitting claims have attracted extensive coverage and last week provoked a national debate on drug addiction treatment.
While many in the drug treatment industry welcomed the centre's call to reconsider how the UK treats long-term addicts, the thinktank has been attacked over "misleading" figures. DrugScope said that it had written to the BBC to complain that, by giving extensive coverage to the report, the corporation had failed "to check the accuracy of claims made, particularly about the cost of treatment and methadone prescribing".
Martin Barnes, DrugScope's chief executive, asked why the corporation had repeated the report's claim that "methadone prescribing costs £730m a year", saying the figure was for the drug treatment system as a whole.
Barnes outlined a series of further examples where he said the report had conflated the true cost of methadone treatment and benefits paid to drug addicts. He pointed out that last year the National Audit Office concluded that drug treatment represents "good value for money" for the taxpayer.
Barnes said: "Not only are the misleading claims potentially damaging to public confidence in drug treatment at a time of spending cuts and competing priorities, they risk reinforcing the stigma and barriers many people in recovery experience."
A spokesman for the BBC confirmed it had received the complaint.
Jamie Doward @'The Guardian'
Origin of Song: Gil Scott-Heron’s Revolution of the Mind
“The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In four parts without commercial interruptions.”
Excoriating the media and marketing, the song’s structure burrowed its way into the collective conscious of musicians—both mainstream and underground—and listeners alike; it is referenced throughout music, and rather un-ironically the title phrase has been repurposed to advertise consumer goods, from sneakers to television itself. The piece is also, of course, foundational to hip-hop, its words potent and direct, even if some of the allusions and references may be lost on those uneducated in ‘60s or ‘70s culture. It also sounds great, which explains why musically it’s a standard-bearer for everything from politicized and sexy neo-soul with funk grooves to jazz. Yet pulsing throughout the piece is Scott-Heron’s projection, similar to the theories of McLuhan and scientists like Tesla who foreshadowed the actual facts of global connectivity as well as the pacifying effect on the brain from viewing from a small screen. Heron was channeling his times while bringing a word to the wise:In four parts without commercial interruptions.”
“The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal…
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised.”
We’re heard via media channels that the revolution will be “digitized,” the revolution will be “synthesized,” but so far, the revolution has not been “organized.” One ill-fated ad campaign suggested the revolution will be televised. But Scott-Heron was well ahead of the ball when he posited a necessary parsing of media-generated “reality” from truth and set his poem to music on his 1971 album, Pieces of a Man. With that release, Scott-Heron was caught in the chasm between jazz and soul, poetry and rock, and few knew just what to do with the new poet and big bass voice on the scene, though time would reveal his impact, as he would later weigh in on matters environmental and racial, as well as political and social. Though often his was a cry in wilderness, it served as a clarion for future generations of conscious voices...The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised.”
Continue reading
Denise Sullivan @'Crawdaddy'
Do you feel that you have been cheated? A rant at U2 live at ‘Glasto’
'ohnoit'sbon(g)o' yesterday
Do you ever feel you have been cheated?There will be a mighty roar when the dark prince Bono takes to the Glastonbury stage this evening- like a choreographered rally thankfully punctuated by the UK UNCUT protestors waving the placards of doom at the showbiz monolith U2 winning the war in the law of averages.
We will stand there, dumbfounded, soaked in Bono’s vile sweat as the clown prince of Jesus Rock stalks onto the stage in his midget heels, with his God hard on and back pocket stuffed with business cards from the Bush family and I will be left wondering just where it all went wrong, knowing that the Wombles are not only sexier but more rock n roll than his band.
Somehow, as a rancid schoolboy, I was conned by the great froth mouthed, amphetamined sex beast known as punk rock into believing that I was going to be part of some sort of stink breathed, gakk infested, terror monkey stukka diving assault onto the vile and badly haired pop mainstream.
For a few brief months I took the beatings on behalf of the skinny trousered punk rock uberlords as I stalked the beer washed streets of my windswept hometown of Blackpool where anti punk violence was an Aperitif before the main course of lard soaked fish and chips.
It was worth it because I felt like I was on the barricades for some sort of revolution collecting bruises was all part of the punk rock experience as much as collecting seven inch singles.
Imagine my shock and disappointment when I realised that all this was for nowt. And that all we were doing was paving the highway for the likes of U2 to launch into their huge international taking the piss philanthropist carrier by bolting together the genius guitar of John McGeogh (god bless his brilliant soul) the bass lines of Lord Peter Hook and the Combat rock chic of our beloved Clash.
They then worked hard and grinned like Christians in an orgy and became the biggest band in the world that no-one really loved.
It all felt very wrong but the Americans made them superstars and their admittedly okey dokey songs sold out the stadiums that superior bands would not even be allowed to piss on.
This all came rushing back to me when I heard that the band were to be playing Glastonbury and that somewhere in the middle of all that mud and expensive Wellington boots there would be the most hideous shrieking since Sting was told that he was not an ‘interlektual’.
The thought that Bongo and his cloth eared Afrika corpse corps would be stukka diving Glass Stoned Bury and entertaining the backstage great unwashed micro celebs who would be leaving their expensive portacabins that are larger and more comfortable than your flat for a glimpse of the pint sized messiah was too much to bear. The micro celebs and their jolly hockey sticks good friends the Eton Rifle Tories will be glorying at the side of the stage, dancing like accountants at a Christmas party whilst on their mobile phones as the band launch into their ill gotten booty of hits whilst I unleash my lunatic fringe and spray-paint the computer screen with spittle and furious words in a spray gun of molten word jism of AK! AK! AK! AK47 adjectives that somehow fail to capture my dissolution with my utterly wasted youth as I realise with a sickening curse that…
U2 made punk rock a waste of fucking time...
John Robb @'Louder Than War'
hmmm...
Photo
I SO hope that is spit...
and why oh why did NATO not authorise a humanitarian bombing sorty that cld have got rid of Coldplay at the same time?
I SO hope that is spit...
and why oh why did NATO not authorise a humanitarian bombing sorty that cld have got rid of Coldplay at the same time?
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