Feds Defend Seizure of WikiLeaks Supporter’s Laptop

Invasion of the Mysteron Killer Sounds radio play and interviews

'I dub from inner to outer space. The sound I get out of Black Ark studio, I don’t really get it out of no other studio. It was like a space craft. You could hear the space in the tracks.' - Lee Perry

Kevin Martin (The Bug, King Midas Sound) and Stuart Baker (Soul Jazz, 100% Dynamite, Sounds of the Universe) have compiled this ace double CD and quadruple vinyl set of electronic dancehall riddims. A bad-ass selection with some undoubted classics like Street Sweeper and Peanie Peanie alongside more outre examples of JA music at its eeriest. Also some more modern and UK produced fare like Kevin’s own Aktion Pak riddim.
I’ve had mixed feelings about the concept. On the one had I was championing the reggae/ragga afronaut connection a decade ago as part of the Association of Autonomous Astronauts and one of my first ever reggae DJ sets was at the Garage in Highbury during an AAA night as part of the 10 day Space 1999 festival. I even did an AAA presentation on dub as the basis for a new intergalactic architecture at a conference organised by Kodwo Eshun in Austria. More recently Wayne and Wax has produced an incredible critical survey of rasta imagery in science fiction in issue 4 of Woofah.
On the other hand, I’ve previously been forthright in my condemnation of people who only seem to like their dancehall with the sounds of black voices erased. I think, on reflection, this criticism is hugely unfair on the curators of the current comp (and indeed Basic Replay who I previously tore into) who have done more than most to promote reggae music in its ancient and modern forms over many many years. But I have always come across a few techno fans who seem to hate ragga vocals and that seems a bit… odd...

(Thanx John!)

Is that lone hacker the new Red under the bed?

William S Burroughs street art in St. Louis

Via

A Madman and His Manifesto

Heath Ledger & Christian Bale taking a break on the set of The Dark Knight

Via

HA!

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Via

The Kingdom and the Towers

Was there a foreign government behind the 9/11 attacks? A decade later, Americans still haven’t been given the whole story, while a key 28-page section of Congress’s Joint Inquiry report remains censored. Gathering years of leaks and leads, in an adaptation from their new book, Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan examine the connections between Saudi Arabia and the hijackers (15 of whom were Saudi), the Bush White House’s decision to ignore or bury evidence, and the frustration of lead investigators—including 9/11-commission staffers, counterterrorism officials, and senators on both sides of the aisle.
@'Vanity Fair'

Australian police investigate calls to assassinate Julia Gillard

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Meanwhile over at Bolt's blog...

The Downfall of a Press Baron

At Border, Teacher Becomes Unwitting Drug Smuggler

Found? The Last Bugs of the Nixon White House

One morning in early March 1971, Army counterintelligence agent Dave Mann was going through the overnight files when his eyes landed on something unexpected: a report that a routine, nighttime sweep for bugs along the Pentagon’s power-packed E-Ring had found unexplained – and unencrypted — signals emanating from offices in the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Someone, it seemed, was eavesdropping on the top brass.
Mann was no stranger to bugs. It was a busy time for eavesdroppers and bug-finders, starting with the constant Spy vs. Spy games with Russian spies. But the Nixon years, he and everyone else would soon discover, had extended such clandestine ops into new territory: bugging not just the Democrats, but people within its own ranks. Eventually, most of the Watergate-era eavesdropping schemes were revealed to the public, including the bombshell that Nixon was bugging himself. But the bugs Dave Mann discovered in the E-Ring in March 1971 — and another batch like it — have remained buried all these years. Until now.
To understand how crazed this era really was, it helps to remember that the Nixon White House was obsessed with not just secrecy, but skullduggery. Only months into the new administration, in 1969, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was so freaked out by the back-alley dealings of Henry Kissinger that he put a spy in the White House to steal documents from his briefcase. Kissinger in turn was bugging his own staff and other officials, including one in the office of the Secretary of Defense...