Monday 26 March 2012

Occupy The War Machine

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The differences are slight: one decade, one president, one letter out of four. “Change the q to an n, don’t use the phrase ‘WMD’ or ‘pre-emptive strike’”; each incoming Press Secretary should just pass out a style guide. It’s so absurd that the first reaction is a feeling of nauseau, surreality, perhaps madness. Nuclear weapons? State sponsored terrorism? Did we fall into a time warp? Do they really think we’ll buy any of this? It hasn’t even been long enough for the talking heads to turn over: it’s the same crooks delivering the same empty lines On CNN, in the New York Times, on the floor of the House. It’s 2003 all over again.
But Washington DC can be occupied, the plutocrats are served by employees who can strike, and the pundits screaming for Iranian blood are just people in a studio that can be taken over. Recognizing this is part of overcoming that politically impotent mode of expression that defined the left under President Bush: outrage. Outrage, as distinct from anger and rage, has always been a weak political position. Outrage is a reaction, the recognition and/or expression of offense or hurt and generally adresses itself to the people committing outrageous acts. Outrage reflects surprise and shock, which is why outrage can be so easily faked and manufactured to cover malicious intent. “I had no idea the corruption in my office had gotten this far! I’m outraged!” Outrage laughs angrily at Jon Stewart’s mugging, outrage signs a Moveon.org petition, outrage threatens to move to Canada. Outrage is individuated and alienated, it is an expression of the powerless...
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The Foreign Language of 'Mad Men'

Sunday 25 March 2012

The king and I: meeting Eric Cantona

♪♫ Spiritualized - Hey Jane

At CIA, a convert to Islam leads the terrorism hunt

Spared?

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The Generation Gap

How similar are parent and child? German photographer Frauke Theilking's photo project called "Generation" observes the similarities and differences between generations. Each photo pairs a parent and child, either a mother/daughter or father/son combo, side by side. Devoid of an elaborate background, Theilking's photos focus the viewer's attention on the subjects, who themselves aren't wearing any distracting clothing.
Looking at the two figures, there are apparent (no pun intended) likenesses and gaps. For a lot of the images, it feels like looking at a split-screen of the same person at different stages in their life.
Pinar @'My Modern Met'

NO ONE is born with hatred or intolerance!!!

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The Statue of Ferlinghetti

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FBI Turns Back On 2,750 Of The 3,000 GPS Devices It Turned Off For Lack Of A Warrant

♪♫ Grinderman/U.N.K.L.E - Hyper Worm Tamer

Bonus:

Ian McEwan: The originality of the species

Nick Lowe @ Noise11

Nick Lowe dropped by for an extensive chat about his long and storied career, as well as discussing his latest album The Old Magic.
Then, he pulled out the guitar to play his latest single ‘Sensitive Man’, the iconic ‘(What’s So Funny ‘Bout’) Peace, Love and Understanding?’, and new song ‘Somebody Cares For Me’ that he wrote with Geraint Watkins.
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(Thanx Stan!)

'Time of My Life' - Dartmouth Idol Finals (2011)

Featuring Jim Yong Kim

College President Is Obama’s Pick for World Bank Chief

(Thanx Sander!)

Emptyset Mix 2012

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Russell Haswell - Ant Colony Featuring Eurofighter Typhoon F2 Flyby
Bruce Gilbert - Oblivio Agitatum
Front 242 - This World Must Be Destroyed
Emptyset - Medium
Andy Stott - We Stay Together
Miles - Flawed
Mika Vainio - It's a Muthang
Emptyset - Monad
Powell - 09
Mark Fell & Peter Rehberg - Zikir
Jeff Mills - Rich
Byetone - Opal
Ancient Methods - Third Method
Heiroglyphic Being - 2 Bath in the Black Sun
Ancient Methods - Second Method
Sleeparchive - Ronan Point
Vainio, Vaisanen, Vega - Incredible Criminals
Emptyset - Function (Roly Porter remix)
Info

(Thanx Dray!)

♫ Happy Birthday, Lawrence Ferlinghetti!!! ♪

Let's rattle the windowpanes with a “Viva Ferlinghetti!!” and a “Viva City Lights!!” Our message to the boss: http://wp.me/p2bH9v-ga
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Retouching a Classic: ‘Less Américains’

Of course, as the title suggests, Less Américains does away with the “Americans” in Frank’s photographs so all that remains, for example, of the Hoboken City Fathers are a line of hats and some political bunting hanging on a two-by-four. And what has been spared in the most famous of all New Orleans street car picture which so perfectly expressed the implied race hierarchy of Jim Crow in the United States? A few vague, unidentifiable shapes that sit within the frame like mismatched puzzle pieces. To quote Jack Kerouac, who wrote an introduction to the American edition of Frank’s book, “The humour, the sadness, the EVERYTHING-ness and American-ness of these pictures (!)” linger like a ghost in these secondary elements.
Less Américains includes an introduction by the artist Elisabeth Tonnard that takes the form of a concrete poetry version of Kerouac’s prose. Tonnard’s approach was to systematically white-out the individual letters A.M.E.R.I.C.A.I.N.S. from Kerouac’s text, leaving an incomprehensible soup of vowels and consonants. His “…basketa pittykats…” becomes the even more cryptic “…B k t p tty-k t …”

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Chicago (1949) by Stanley Kubrick

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French President Sarkozy Sees Opportunity for Censorship, Seizes It

In the wake of a horrific rampage, in which Mohamed Merah (now dead after a 32-hour standoff with police) reportedly murdered three French soldiers, three young Jewish schoolchildren, and a rabbi, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has begun calling for criminal penalties for citizens who visit web sites that advocate for terror or hate. "From now on, any person who habitually consults Web sites that advocate terrorism or that call for hatred and violence will be criminally punished," Sarkozy was reported as saying.
Apart from the obvious flaws in Sarkozy's plan--users, can, of course, use anonymizing tools to view the material or simply access it from a variety of locations to avoid appearing as "habitual" viewers--there are numerous other reasons to be concerned about criminalizing access to information.
First, there's no guarantee that criminalizing access to hate speech or terrorist content will end the very real problems of hate crime and terrorism. Extremist violence didn't start with the Internet and it won't end with it, either.
Second, who defines "hate speech"? In France, that definition includes Holocaust denial, which in the past resulted in Yahoo! discontinuing auctions of Nazi memoribilia (the collectors of which are not, by any stretch, all sympathizers). And negative comments about France's Muslim community have also resulted in criminal penalties, most notably in the case of actress Brigitte Bardot, who has been convicted five times for "inciting racial hatred." While Holocaust denial and comments about Muslims such as those made by Bardot may be deplorable, they should not be criminal.
Finally, while Sarkozy is not--yet--calling for websites to be blocked, it wouldn't be a stretch; after all, France already offers mechanisms for blocking child pornography and "incitement to terrorism and racial hatred." If Sarkozy were to decide censorship is the answer, one major risk would be overblocking: there's nary a country in the world that censors the Internet without collateral damage (in Australia, for example, testing on a would-be censorship regime found the site of a dentist blocked, among others).
EFF has serious concerns about the implications of Sarkozy's comments. When a democratic country such as France decides to censor or criminalize speech, it is not just the French that suffer, but the world, as authoritarian regimes are given easy justification for their own censorship. We urge French authorities to judge crime on action, not expression.
Jillian C. York @'EFF'
(Thanx GKB!)

Obama: Trayvon Martin death a tragedy that must be fully investigated

SkullX

(Photo: TimN - Northcote 24/03/12)

Borat's version of Kazakh anthem played at Kuwait medal ceremony

Kazakhstan's shooting team was taken by surprise when a spoof national anthem from the film Borat was used at a medal ceremony in Kuwait.
The team demanded an apology after Maria Dmitrienko was played the obscene song, which features lyrics about prostitutes and potassium exports, as she received her gold medal.
A video posted on YouTube shows Dmitrienko on the podium, her hand on her heart, looking perplexed as the song begins to play. She appears to see the funny side and is smiling by the end.
The blunder apparently occurred after the event's organisers downloaded the parody from the internet by mistake. They also got the Serbian anthem wrong.
An apology was issued and the ceremony staged again.
The spoof song was taken from Sacha Baron Cohen's 2006 film, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan", in which Kazakhs are portrayed as inbred racists.
It includes the lines: "Kazakhstan's prostitutes cleanest in the region/Except of course Turkmenistan's."
The incident was the second in the space of a few weeks involving a slip-up over Kazakhstan's anthem at a sporting event.
Earlier this month, stunned officials opening a ski event in northern Kazakhstan were blasted with a few bars of Ricky Martin's Livin' la Vida Loca instead of the national tune.
Barry Neild @'The Guardian'

Bad Egg

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Saturday 24 March 2012

Osborne rips up his ‘new economic model’

It's Time to Upgrade Your Biological Software

♪♫ The Stranglers - Nice 'N' Sleazy

China's Mystery Ferrari

Baloji with Konono N°1 - Karibu Ya Bintou

The term 'world music' is outdated and offensive

(Thanx Son #1!)

Spaceboy says:

Riot

(Thanx Mark!)

Pete Waterman: 'I Invented Dubstep and Drum & Bass'

He says: “You know the Hit Factory really started drum and bass, and dubstep, we were doing those sounds years ago. Now Sub Focus and Chase & Status all come here to make their record.”