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Beacon Press is planning a new series of books focused on free speech. It is a natural progression for the independent Boston press, which has long been associated with First Amendment issues, having published the first full edition of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, as well as authors including Howard Zinn, James Baldwin, Ben Bagdikian, Cornell West and others. The series will explore free speech over the first 150 years of American history; the emergence of an organized fight for free speech in the post-WWI years, and battles that have been fought over free speech in recent years. "Beacon Press publishes books that try to change the way that people think about fundamental issues. We believe that exploring the history of free speech is essential to ensuring that our understanding and respect for the First Amendment continue to grow," press director Helene Atwan said. In $ingapore, free speech is associated with free talk time on your mobile phone. So when someone says there's free speech in $ingapore, they refer to a phone company offering free talk time. That's $heep City. +
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ELLE STORY ON FBI SNITCH In the the April issue of Elle, there is an interview with FBI informant "Anna". "Anna" was paid US$75,000 to fabricate a crime and implicate three environmental activists. Eric McDavid is one of the three who has remained strong in the face of government repression and is fighting the case. Eric McDavid was arrested in Auburn, CA on January 13, 2006 as part of the government's ongoing Green Scare campaign. He now faces two decades in prison. Eric has been held in solitary confinement at the Sacramento County Main Jail since the day of his arrest. He was arrested along with Zachary Jenson and Lauren Weiner and all three were charged with "conspiracy to destroy property by means of fire or explosives." The government's case is based on the word of a single FBI informant who was paid over $75,000 to fabricate a crime and implicate the trio. Both of Eric's co-defendants have since caved under the threat of being imprisoned for 20 years and pleaded guilty to a lesser charge. In doing so, they also agreed to testify against Eric and cooperate in every way possible, including testifying in front of secret grand jury proceedings. Eric has been repeatedly denied bail. The article is unsurprisingly slanted against the activists and is heavy on the terrorism rhetoric. Visit supporteric.org for more info or read the Elle story here. +
+ + + + DYLAN'S CHILDREN'S BOOK The legend
Bob Dylan has completed a kid's book called 'Forever Young'. According
to the press release it is a "heartwarming and meaningful story about
the importance of doing good", reports Uncut.co.uk. The 40-page picture
book is for those aged three and up, and should hit shelves on October
6. The times they are a-changing. We await the album Dylan sings Nursery
Rhymes with glee. So you think you're a rock writer? NME, the UK music weekly, is hoping to find the next generation of reviewers by sponsoring the Critic Of The Year award at the 2008 Guardian Student Media Awards. Marking the awards' 30th anniversary, NME Editor Conor McNicholas will help judge the category, with the winner getting an six-month internship as NME.COM regional blogger. The contest is open to student journalists, and entries must be received by July 4. See Mediaguardian.co.uk/studentmediaawards for more. Frankly whofivesaguck? Rock critics or any type of critics have set up their own blogs and are furiously writing away. Look for sites ranked at the top and you will find them. +
+ + + + DAVE GIBBONS' WATCHMEN
The UK's Titan Books is to shed new light on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen with Watching The Watchmen by Dave Gibbons [due October 2008]. Providing the ultimate companion to the comics masterpiece, artist Dave Gibbons gives his own account of the genesis of Watchmen in this dust-jacketed hardback volume, opening his archives to reveal excised pages, early versions of the script, original character designs, page thumbnails, sketches and much more, including posters, covers and rare portfolio art. "I've had a great time, re-visiting the very beginnings of Watchmen and unearthing material I haven't set eyes on for many years. As a fan myself, this is the kind of stuff I eat up and I'm sure the many devotees of the graphic novel will do the same!" says Gibbons. This is timed
for maximum sales when the movie version arrives. Watchmen is the tale
of vigilantes forced into retirement by a public fearful of superheroes
whose powers keep them above the law.
OUT OF SOUTH AFRICA - EROTIC STORIES A new anthology of erotic stories is in the book shops but what sets it apart from similar anthologies is that it was written by award-winning -- mostly literary -- South African women writers. Open: An Erotic Anthology (published by Oshun) contains stories by Marita van der Vyver, Tracey Hawthorne, Henrietta Rose-Innes, Lauren Beukes, Suzy Bell, Mary Watson, Helen Brain, Dawn Garisch, Nichole Whitton, Palesa Mazamisa, Joanne Fedler, Elizabeth Pienaar, Alison Campbell, Makhosazana Xaba, Helen Moffett, Lindiwe Nkutha, Sarah Lotz and Megan Kerr. This anthology opens not only the debate about the representation of sex in literature, but also a vista on the subtleties of arousal, the frank spectacle of the different forms of sex in women's lives and the presentation of intimacy as both deeply mundane and vividly transformative. +
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AMERICAN FLAGG! This July, Howard Chaykin's American Flagg! [Image/Dynamic Forces] arrives for the series' 25th anniversary in its much-anticipated hardcover definitive edition. The indie comic was first published in the '80s. In American Flagg!'s dystopian future, America and its corporations have fled the Earth for the relative safety of Mars. Their abandoned planet has been ravaged by war and a recently fired television star, Reuben Flagg, becomes its reluctant champion. The award-winning series' first 14 issues will be collected in this definitive edition hardcover designed by Chip Kidd and contains Chaykin's never-before-seen sketchbook and an all-new, 12-page story written and illustrated by Chaykin, all book-ended between an introduction by author Michael Chabon and an afterword by artist Jim Lee. "This hardcover goes well beyond my wildest initial expectations," Chaykin said. "The past few years consisted of remastering and restoring every line of every panel on every page to ensure this is the best edition possible." Previous collections by the original publisher, First Comics, were softcover editions. +
+ + + + England had Robin Hood, possibly the first "pirate" who stole from the rich, to share with the poor and needy. Today, since Napster offered a way to share music quickly and easily, this practice of sharing has been labelled "theft" and people who share are called "pirates". The BBC recently made a 20-min podcast on today's pirates and included the views of the people who run popular bittorrent site, The Pirate Bay. The BBC asked Pirate Bay's Peter Sunde: "You say they [the film and music industry] are wrong about the economical aspects but they would say: 'I own this film, I own this music, and you are stealing this from me'. How are they wrong about the economical aspect?" Sunde: "Well, what we've seen in the music industry is that interest is growing, more people are interested in music and they spend more money than ever on music, but the record industry is shrinking because nobody wants to buy CDs anymore, it's an inferior product, you can't put the CD directly on your MP3 player." Sunde believes it's about control: "They don't want to sell MP3s because they feel they don't have the control they used to have, so they don't understand that they are losing out on money because they are not following how the industry is changing." If the business wants to control, then Sunde reckons they want you to be their slaves. "The Pirate Bay is fighting for freedom because we don't want to be information slaves, we don't want to have someone else decide what we should and shouldn't think." You can listen
to the podcast for free here. Germany has some of the toughest copyright laws and it's thought that as many as 200,000 German file-sharers have had their identities revealed to entertainment and media companies, so that they may be threatened with legal action. Not any more. In what could be a landmark victory for file-sharers, the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) in Germany has just issued a ruling [March 20]. With it comes a new level of privacy to protect personal data and communications. No longer will it be possible for media companies to force ISPs to give up the identities of its subscribers who they accuse of copyright infringement, which will undoubtedly be a huge relief to the ISPs too. After all, these are the ISPs biggest customers we're talking about. In future, it will only be possible to get an identity behind an IP address if dealing with a 'heavy' crime, such as terrorism, murder, child pornography or kidnapping. Full story here. $ingapore follows U.S. copyright laws. ISPs here hand over internet users names when requested by the copyright owners. But copyright owners have to pay for each name. +
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ABDUCTED BY DALEKS A website 109 Team has found the lost footage of an old adult movie featuring the robot Daleks from the BBC's Doctor Who series. Abducted By Daleks was put on sale recently and immediately sued by the BBC, quickly disappearing into a black hole. The film starts with three women picking up a fourth (who's really a Dalek agent) and then as they're driving down the street, they run over a super-fake looking alien and their car is wrecked. Even though there's a woman-skinning serial killer at large, the four women wander off into the forest, split up and then decide to remove their clothes randomly. And that's when the Daleks grab them with their teleportation device. The interrogation doesn't go very well, so first the Daleks bring in their sexy human agent, who dresses up like a dominatrix and threatens the women with a big bullwhip. And then the Daleks set their ray guns on vibrate and train them on the women. Copies of
this adult film are now incredibly rare -- but well worth hunting down,
if only for the amusement value. Clips with some nudity can be seen here. The BBC reports author Elif Shafak, who was prosecuted for "insulting Turkishness" in her book The Bastard Of Istanbul has been longlisted for the Orange book prize. She faced charges for comments made by her characters on the mass killings of Armenians in the final years of the Ottoman Empire in the 20th Century. She was eventually acquitted. Turkish-born Shafak is one of 20 writers who have been longlisted for the British prize for women's writing. The winner of the £30,000 prize will be announced on 4 June. Don't try
writing such a book in $heep City, $ingapore. If they won't allow peaceful
outdoor protests, it's unlikely a book like this will go far. Unless of
course it is written by one of their own.
NELSON MANDELA AT 90 According to The UK Sun, a 90th birthday concert is being planned for Nelson Mandela, lionised as the Father of the New South Africa, to be held at London's Hyde Park on June 27. The regulars have lined up for the event - Bono's U2, Queen and Paul McCartney representing the older acts plus Razorlight and Keane the new. Hosting the event will be the "last man on Earth" Will Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett. But is Mandela worthy of such an honor? In John Pilger's 2007 book Freedom Next Time: Resisting The Empire, a different Mandela is seen. The book surveys five of the saddest places on the planet where the promise of Globalization was empty - in Diego Garcia, Palestine, India, South Africa and Afghanistan. In South Africa, he shows, poverty is rife and whites still own most of the good land, where those who committed atrocities during the Apartheid years simply slipped away unpunished because "national reconciliation" was a facade that provided them the way out. A painful read that justice is just a word for law and order and a sense of fairness is no longer desirable. It's been 15 years since apartheid was dismantled in South Africa in 1993.
+ + + + + "The record business was perfect. It was a perfect industry. And I want to tell you why," says marketing guru Seth Godin at his website. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/03/the-live-music.html The operative word here is "was". Godin then lists all the good stuff - an army of retailers, radio stations, music magazines, music television and fan clubs devoted to discussing and promoting pop culture. What other business, asks Godin, has such an array of free support? "Entire chains of retailers devoted to selling your product. In malls they're paying the rent, not you," he says. And as a bonus, when records got old, they had to be replaced. Another sale. Then sometime in 1980, the compact disc arrived. Record companies saw opportunity in this new format - to charge a higher price for CDs, to convince consumers to replace all their LPs [vinyl records] to CDs at the new higher price, to reduce the cost of manufacturing and distribution as CDs were cheaper to make and cost less to distribute. In their greed, what they didn't see was the longevity of the digital music file on the CD. Godin than addresses the issue of digital music, the internet and free sharing or digital piracy as the record industry sees it. But says Godin, "Music is not in trouble. I believe more people are listening to more music now than any time in the history of the world. Probably five times more than 20 years ago... that much! "But, the music business is in trouble... You can curse the fact that it's really easy to copy a CD. You can curse the fact that we don't care about the American Top 40. You can curse the fact that there isn't Top 40 radio that matters. What good is that going to do?" Godin than interprets the problem of digital downloads as fresh opportunity because now the music fans who share the music are the new distributors and they do it for free. He says: "Or, we could think about the fact that you have more momentum and more assets and more talented people than anybody else. [And], at the very same time that people are listening to more music than ever before. That's really cool. And, so when we think about transitions what we know is that timid trapeze artists are dead trapeze artists." Clearly there is fresh opportunity but for whom? It seems the artist can now speak/ sell directly to the music fan ie like NIN and Radiohead have demonstrated. What remains to be seen is what role the record company will have in the new model. Can the middle man be finally eliminated? The full story here. Note:
Seth Godin is a best-selling author of business books. His first book
to achieve mainstream popularity was on the topic of
permission marketing. WHAT IS TERROR? It's not really what's in the eye of the beholder. These days, as Noam Chomsky puts it, the definition holds true "according to the rules of Anglo-American discourse, which defines 'the world' as the political class in Washington and London" ie if Washington says so, it must be so. In his latest essay on the recent assassination of Imad Moughniyeh, a senior commander of Hizbollah, Chomsky takes aim at the linguistics behind terrorism. "The more vulgar apologists for U.S. and Israeli crimes solemnly explain that, while Arabs purposely kill people, the U.S. and Israel, being democratic societies, do not intend to do so. Their killings are just accidental ones, hence not at the level of moral depravity of their adversaries. That was, for example, the stand of Israel's High Court when it recently authorized severe collective punishment of the people of Gaza by depriving them of electricity (hence water, sewage disposal, and other such basics of civilized life). "The same line of defense is common with regard to some of Washington's past peccadilloes, like the destruction in 1998 of the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. The attack apparently led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people, but without intent to kill them, hence not a crime on the order of intentional killing... "Rather, they and their apologists regarded Africans much as we do the ants we crush while walking down a street. We are aware that it is likely to happen (if we bother to think about it), but we do not intend to kill them because they are not worthy of such consideration. Needless to say, comparable attacks by Araboushim in areas inhabited by human beings would be regarded rather differently." Apparently, there's a "terrorist" running loose in $heep City, $ingapore. He escaped from a high security centre Feb 27 2008 while apparently taking a pee, AP reported. He is a man with a limp and said to have plotted everything from hijacking a plane to crash into busy Changi International Airport to marshalling several trucks laden with bombs to trash train stations and the American Club. None of which ever happened. He was detained without trial, of course, and has now escaped. Or so "they" say. Terrorist
mosquitoes have already killed 20 $ingaporeans in the current 2007-2008
dengue fever epidemic. If $ingaporeans are asked which "terror" requires
more attention... 
U.S. LYNCHINGS TO BE TOLD IN NEW GRAPHIC NOVEL DC's Vertigo will publish a new graphic novel by Mat Johnson and artist Warren Pleece called Incognegro [as in Incognito]. According to the publicity, the story revolves around the practice in the U.S. south of photographing the torture and lynching of blacks back in the early 20th Century. These photos were then handed out to the white crowd as a souvenir. The graphic novel is about a fair-skinned negro who passes himself as a white to cover the story for his black newspaper. Mat Johnson
is an acclaimed African American novelist and teacher of creative writing
at the University of Houston. He has published such novels as Drop
and Hunting in Harlem (both from Bloomsbury) and was named a James
Baldwin Fellow by the U.S Artists Foundation in 2007.
This is from Mike Stark--Los Angeles radio veteran, author of Black Sabbath: An Oral History, and friend to musicians everywhere.
If you've listened to my work over the years, you know that Dave Marsh has always been part of it in some respect. We've done numerous long form interviews since my days back at KNAC-FM and I consider him a friend and my all time favorite rock writer and critic. Besides writing two bios on Bruce Springsteen he helped start the legendary Creem magazine, worked for years at Rolling Stone and actually coined the phrase "punk rock" while at Creem. He currently has a GREAT book out on the Beatles Second Album (yes, there's a wonderful book in that 22 minute album) and continues to edit Rock & Rap Confidential.
For years I told him that he should be doing radio and for years he kept writing great books and articles - ignoring my suggestion. Now the guy has two regular shows on Sirius and is hosting a show on Little Steven's Underground Garage Channel 25 on February 21 at 4pm ET. He's doing more radio these days than Howard Stern!
Here's a little piece I put together that gives you a little taste of what his Live from the Land of Hope and Dreams show is all about: http://www.rockrap.com/LOHAD.mp3
If you are a Sirius subscriber PLEASE check his shows out.
DAVE MARSH
- LIVE FROM THE LAND OF HOPE AND DREAMS on Sirius Left, Channel 146 Kick Out
The Jams with Dave Marsh on Sirius Stars, Channel 102 Kick Out The Jams with Dave Marsh is based at the intersection of music and politics. Dave tells stories, interviews music figures and others, takes calls from listeners, intertwines politics and plays some really cool records.
Dave Marsh
guest DJs on The Underground Garage! +
+ + + + THE TALEBAN AND PAKISTAN'S DETERIORATING SECURITY China Matters takes a contrarian and pessimistic view of efforts to turn the tide in Afghanistan by stepping up military operations by the US and Pakistan itself in Pakistan's borderlands:
"It looks like the conventional security equation for South Asia is back asswards. Pakistan doesn't hold the key to Afghanistan. Trying to tip the struggle into the West's favor by injecting more arms, money, and backbone into Pakistan is simply going to expand the conflict into a nation totally unable to deal with it. With Afghanistan driving the strategic thinking inside Pakistan both for the militants and their opponents, there is no magic combination of force and conciliation inside Pakistan's fractured and vulnerable society that can solve the political and military equation. "The key to Pakistan is Afghanistan. Only decisive victory by the Western forces (very unlikely) or by the Taleban (much more likely) will alleviate the crisis in Pakistan's borderlands." The post explores how the Taleban is expected to react to the prospect of unilateral US military operations inside Pakistan, launched from a newly operational US base at Kunar, three miles from the Pakistani border:
"...opportunities inside Afghanistan and the threat from Kunar - and from more aggressive unilateral U.S. operations inside Pakistan in general - dictate an extension of the Taleban's overall Afghan strategy into Pakistan. The critical point has arrived as the Taleban high command extends the Afghan battle into Pakistan by attacking the assets, infrastructure, and policy supporting NATO forces in Afghanistan. The military battle has already begun. The political battle will soon be joined. "According to Shahzad [of Asia Times], the Pakistan Taleban is preparing to announce a truce with Pakistan in North Waziristan. But to me that doesn't necessarily mean a cessation of hostilities inside Pakistan. It means that militant attacks directed at NATO convoys and related infrastructure will probably continue, placing Pakistan's military in the politically awkward position of pursuing operations against the Taleban apparently for the sole purpose of helping Uncle Sam trample on its Pashtun brethren in eastern Afghanistan. The prospects for Pakistan successfully dealing with this challenge are grim." Click
here for the full post at China Matters. YOU ARE BEING RECORDED BY YOUR PHONE COMPANY Dear Reader, AT&T
and Verizon customers are having their phone conversations handed over
to Bush's National Security Agency for review at its discretion. This
is a slap in the face to the Constitution and our basic right to privacy.
We often give you the opportunity to support progressive causes, and this
is no exception. By switching your wireless service to Credo Mobile you
can use your consumer power to help stop illegal wiretapping by refusing
to support the telecom companies
who promote it. Don Hazen Hazen adds [in his email] "AT&T and Verizon have been assisting the Bush administration's illegal wiretapping program for quite some time. AT&T is alleged to run every byte of its internet traffic through a listening room where only NSA-approved personnel can go. And to make matters worse, the Bush administration has just about convinced Congress to grant the telecom companies retroactive immunity from suits from their angry customers." AlterNet is urging Americans to sign up with an alternative telcom that won't spy - CREDO Mobile. "CREDO Mobile is brought to you by your friends at Working Assets. It's the same great wireless service we've offered for years, with a new name to reflect our commitment to the causes we believe in." Read more http://www.alternet.org/credomobile_Jan08 We can already hear the groans that if you're not a terrorist nobody will bother you. But if you exercise similar rights to listen in on them, you'd be arrested for spying not investigative journalism. +
+ + + + LONDON PROGRESSIVE JOURNAL The second issue of this on-line news magazine is out now. http://www.londonprogressivejournal.com There is an interview with activist journalist John Pilger and an excellent essay on baby killer and man and woman and grandpa killer General Suharto - The Bloody Legacy of General Suharto. The Indonesian is in hospital, a sick and tired old man. In his prime, he ordered the execution of many. Some say millions. The journal is updated weekly and covers politics with a social conscience. It leans to the left. In $heep City, $ingapore, communism used to be a spectre called upon to scare the $heep who dared to speak up and voice compassion for the poor. But these days, $ingapore's high and mighty kow tow to China, the last Communist nation of any standing. Not that China practices socialism. Irony isn't it? If you are
sick and tired of propaganda from the BBC, CNN, CNBC etc, you can subscribe
to the London Progressive Journal. Just scroll to the bottom of their
main page. Did you know that George Bush and The White House issued 935 false statements after September 11? US President George W Bush and other top officials issued almost one thousand false statements about the national security threat from Iraq following the September 11 attacks, according to a study by two not-for-profit organisations, January 23, 2008. The Associated Press reports the study, published on the website of the Centre for Public Integrity, concluded the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanised public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretences". http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23097132-1702,00.html Students
of how the Bush administration led the nation into the Iraq war can now
go online to browse a comprehensive database of top officials' statements
before the invasion, connecting the dots between hundreds of claims, mostly
discredited since then, linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda or warning
that he possessed forbidden weapons. +
+ + + + NEW JAPANESE FICTION
Reuters: In Japanese novelist Miyuki Miyabe's Tokyo, the moon hangs low over dark rivers, spiraling debt leads to murder, and a young woman roams the streets setting criminals afire with a single thought. Miyabe has gone from being an office clerk who wrote only on weekends to becoming one of Japan's most popular, prolific and prize-winning authors with 46 novels to her name. Her works, which cover genres from horror, to fantasy, to historical fiction, have been translated into 11 languages. Miyabe's popularity across Asia has not extended to the English speaking world, but her publisher hopes this will change with the release of the English translation of her novel "The Devil's Whisper," which contains Miyabe's characteristic use of rich, dark portraits of modern Japan and Tokyo. "Tokyo has two faces. One is the one everyone knows: the economic power, the bright, shining place where all the political power gathers and all the people of strength come together," Miyabe, who rarely gives interviews, told Reuters recently. "But there's another face, the place where ordinary people live. They can't take part in the beautiful Tokyo -- it's kind of scary to them -- but this is the Tokyo I write about." Miyabe's style has clearly emerged from her own experiences. Born in December 1960, she grew up in the same working-class neighborhood on Tokyo's east side where she still lives today, the fourth generation on the same plot of land. Her father -- who loved to tell her scary stories -- worked on the assembly line of a small factory and her mother was a seamstress who frequently took her to movies. On her own, she read voraciously, especially science fiction and mysteries. "It was a neighborhood full of people who worked with their hands -- nobody wrote, and nobody worked at a desk," she said. "I loved to read but never thought then that I'd become a writer." If you've
visited $heep City, you will see that government-funded and state-sponsored
artists can only write all-good, no-bad about $ingapore. Buy a copy of
Miyabi's The Devil's Whisper. Reuters
report. ISA - A SYMBOL OF TORTURE THAT SILENCES PEACEFUL PROTESTS When the Malaysian government recently arrested activists under the dreaded Internal Security Act, common to both Malaysia and $heep City $ingapore, Malaysian civil society reacted strongly. There was silence in $heep City, $ingapore. In fact, $ingapore's Think Centre celebrated Human Rights Day, Dec 15, without a mention of the Malaysian arrests. So much for Asean solidarity and human rights. Click
here for the December 13, 2007 open letter from Amnesty, Malaysia.
INTEREST
RATE "FREEZE"? THE REAL STORY IS FRAUD The following is an excerpt by Sean Olender Dec 9, 2007: New proposals to ease America's great mortgage meltdown keep rolling in. First the Treasury Department urged the creation of a new fund that would buy risky mortgage bonds as a tactic to hide what those bonds were really worth. (Not much.) Then the idea was to use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy the risky loans, even if it was clear that U.S. taxpayers would eventually be stuck with the bill. But that plan went south after Fannie suffered a new accounting scandal, and Freddie's existing loan losses shot up more than expected. Now, just unveiled Thursday, comes the "freeze," the brainchild of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. It sounds good: For five years, mortgage lenders will freeze interest rates on a limited number of "teaser" subprime loans. Other homeowners facing foreclosure will be offered assistance from the Federal Housing Administration. But unfortunately, the "freeze" is just another fraud - and like the other bailout proposals, it has nothing to do with U.S. house prices, with "working families," keeping people in their homes or any of that nonsense. The sole goal of the freeze is to prevent owners of mortgage-backed securities, many of them foreigners, from suing U.S. banks and forcing them to buy back worthless mortgage securities at face value - right now almost 10 times their market worth. The ticking time bomb in the U.S. banking system is not resetting subprime mortgage rates. The real problem is the contractual ability of investors in mortgage bonds to require banks to buy back the loans at face value if there was fraud in the origination process. And, to be sure, fraud is everywhere. It's in the loan application documents, and it's in the appraisals. There are e-mails and memos floating around showing that many people in banks, investment banks and appraisal companies - all the way up to senior management - knew about it. I can hear the hum of shredders working overtime, and maybe that is the new "hot" industry to invest in. There are lots of people who would like to muzzle subpoena-happy New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to buy time and make this all go away. Cuomo is just inches from getting what he needs to start putting a lot of people in prison. I bet some people are trying right now to make him an offer "he can't refuse." Despite Thursday's ballyhooed new deal with mortgage lenders, does anyone really think that it can ultimately stop fraud lawsuits by mortgage bond investors, many of them spread out across the globe? The catastrophic consequences of bond investors forcing originators to buy back loans at face value are beyond the current media discussion. The loans at issue dwarf the capital available at the largest U.S. banks combined, and investor lawsuits would raise stunning liability sufficient to cause even the largest U.S. banks to fail, resulting in massive taxpayer-funded bailouts of Fannie and Freddie, and even FDIC. ...Henry Paulson became the U.S. Treasury secretary on July 10, 2006, after the extent of the debacle was coming into focus for those in the know. Goldman Sachs achieved recent accolades in the markets for having bet heavily against the housing market, while Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Bear Sterns, Merrill Lynch and others got hammered for failing to time the end of the credit bubble. Goldman Sachs is the only major investment bank in the United States that has emerged as yet unscathed from this debacle. The success of its strategy must have resulted from fairly substantial bets against housing, mortgage banking and related industries, which also means that Goldman Sachs saw this coming at the same time they were bundling and selling these loans. ...It is truly amazing that right now everyone in the country is deferring to Paulson and the heads of Countrywide, JPMorgan, Bank of America and others as the best group to work out a solution to this problem. No one is talking about the fact that these people created the problem and profited to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars from it. For sure you won't hear this on BBC or CNN. Read all here.
THE BASEMENT TAPES IN PRINT Million Dollar
Bash: Bob Dylan, The Band And The Basement Tapes is a new book written
by musician and writer Sid Griffin. It tells for the first time the whole
story of the Basement Tapes, recorded in summer 1967 when Bob Dylan's
career was at a crossroads. Recovering from a mysterious motorcycle crash,
he gathered together a few musician friends in Woodstock, New York, and
informally recorded a bunch of songs intended to be heard by no one but
themselves. In this new book, musician and author Sid Griffin examines
the recordings in detail, demonstrating on every page a musician's insight
into the Basement Tapes, the men who recorded them, and the times in which
they were made. Every Dylan fan needs this book. Published by Jawbone
Press, the book has 336 pages. +
+ + + + A new coffee-table book on the art and life of Jack Kirby, Marvel's main artist during its Silver Age, will be published in February, 2008. The work of longtime friend and associate Mark Evanier, Kirby: King Of Comics, will showcase in high quality paper and printing, original Kirby art. Readers will see an entire Fighting American story, reproduced from the original art, complete with visible whiteout, stray pencil lines and margin notes. Evanier penned a 35,000 word essay to go along with the visual delights. Kirby co-created
such Marvel staples as Captain America, Fantastic Four and for DC, the
New Gods. The book will be published by Abrams. Is Led Zeppelin's new album, Mothership, a rip-off or a revelation? Released this week, the two-CD best-of heralds the Seventies rock gods' live reunion with a track listing remarkably similar to their previous two-CD best-of. Remasters, released in 1990, sold in airshiploads, thanks to the acclaimed restoration work by the band's guitarist, Jimmy Page. Seventeen years later, he has done it again, with a new remastering engineer. Has some 21st-century sonic hoodoo been applied to these blues-rock anthems? Are all previous versions of these songs now second-rate, redundant? Or is this remastering lark all just a bit of a gimmick? Opinion, so far, is divided. The album is a must, argues Uncutmagazine, "for those who wish to hear Zep at their heaviest, deepest, softest and crispest". The influential American music site pitchfork.com also digs the new sound - "revelatory," it assures us, "on even the s****est stereos". At amazon.co.uk, though, at least one little boy reckons the emperor has no clothes: "You'd have to have ears like K-9 to hear any perceptible hike in quality from Remasters." So who's right? In the Abbey Road studios, North London, the chief remastering engineer, Peter Mew, and I are trying to find out. Using Mew's 40 years of experience and his seriously expensive playback equipment, we're searching for the ultimate listening experience. We have Mothership, Remasters and - just for fun - some old LPs to compare. And we're not leaving the room till we figure out if Led Zep are really rocking harder than ever before. - by Dominic Maxwell, Nov 16. Read the rest here. +
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THE
CINEMA OF NORTH AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST As more viewers try to enter the world of Middle Eastern cinema, it's timely that new books are appearing to give us a handle into this cinematic area. The Cinema of North Africa and the Middle East, edited by Gonul Donmez-Colin, offers us a way in by reviewing 24 key films by a slew of film scholars and critics. The sampling gives us Egypt, Iran and Turkey (each with four entries), Tunisia and Lebanon (each with two entries), Israel (with three) and Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Morocco, Algeria. The problems are many. The definition of the term Middle East is one of them and Donmez-Colin addresses it early on. The Indians rightly see the area as Western Asia, as Middle East as a term smacks of old colonialism and this area of cinema is united in its resistance of colonialism. This brings up the other problem of the writers. Even when they are Arab in origin, they hail from Western universities. It is a known fact that it's always difficult to find the local voice and one wonders whether this problem will persist in the future collections on Asian cinema in this book series. Furthermore, Israel is over-represented with three entries and one of them, Amos Gitai's Kippur, doesn't even rank as a classic. It may be important personally to Gitai's filmography but not as a representative selection. Nevertheless, there are many joys to reading this book. For example, there is a very excellent deconstruction of Oussama Mohammad's very dense, multi-layered film, Stars in Broad Daylight, by critic Rasha Salti, which explains just why this film was produced by the Syrian state in 1988 and subsequently restricted from domestic release to this day. Or academic Yehuda Judd Ne'eman's sexual reading of Shmuel Imberman's anti-war film, I Don't Give A Damn (1987). Finally, the book also excels in the other form of resistance, that of women's rights. From Farida Benlyazid's A Door to the Sky (Morocco, 1988), Moufida Tlatli's Silences of the Palace (Tunisia, 1994) to Jocelyn Saab's Once Upon A Time, Beirut (Lebanon, 1994), the tapestry of how women have been a force of change is richly revealed. Each essay also strives to underpin the politics of the country's cinema, showing once again, that while art itself, as Edward Said puts it, "is utterly individual", it also cannot remain disconnected. - Philip Cheah +
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$INGAPORE
BESTSELLER ON AMAZON.COM The book Escape From Paradise has been selected as Amazon.com's bestselling book among its $ingapore customers for the past few months. It is written by May Chu and John Harding and is about the life of a great granddaughter of the Haw Par family who founded Tiger Balm. The Book Reader had this to say of the book: "Americans have a saying: luck is a lady. And this lady and her subsequent husband have written a somber, very human tale of a woman's remarkable journey". Barnes and Noble called the book "$ingapore Confidential at its best". Escape from Paradise is still Amazon's #1 best seller for Singapore and was ranked at 7,824 overall on July 24, 2003 by Amazon, which is ahead of books by Lee Kuan Yew. The book is now available in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at the Kinokuniya Bookstore, in Petronas Twin Towers and in their branch in Sydney, Australia. Read more at http://www.escapefromparadise.com/NewFiles/bc.html + + + + +
LIKE A ROLLING STONE Nashville City Paper review: "Those who missed the earlier incarnation of Rolling Stone, when it was a serious music journal, will savor the new book, The Alt.Culture.Guide: A Journal of (Un)Popular Culture (Anthem Pop/Kult), which just published its inaugural edition. "Its primary writer and editor is Rev. Keith A. Gordon, a three-decade journalism veteran and former music editor of Take One magazine, and contributor to Bone, and In Review among many others. The book evolved from Gordon’s webzine, and was expanded via interviews and other columns. Gordon currently writes for the The All Music Guide and several other regional and national magazines and newspapers. Bill Glahn, who also served as co-editor, Charlie Braxton, Tommy Hash and Keis Koch are the first edition’s other contributors." Click
here for the full review. You can order a copy from Bill Glahn, 414 Howard Chapel Road, Urbana, MO 65767. Postpaid it's US$11.50 to anywhere in the U.S. Outside of the US please contact Bill for rates at billglahn@hotmail.com
BUSH’S BURNING DESIRE Many have
said US President George W Bush is building the second Roman Empire with
the start of the invasion of Iraq. Now comes a book that explains America’s
military occupation of Iraq. Bush In Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq
by Tariq Ali [Verso, US$20, 224 pgs] is a serious analysis by a mainstream
publisher. The book has been described by Amazon.com as "unique"
in moving beyond the corporate looting by the US military government to
offer an in-depth analysis of the extent of resistance to the US occupation.
Tariq Ali concludes that there is a need to refound Mark Twain’s
mammoth American Anti-Imperialist League to carry forward the momentum
of the anti-war movement that gathered to stop the Iraq War. Tariq Ali’s
previous book was The Clash Of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity.
Arundhati
Roy’s new book, War Talk [Alternative Tentacles, US$12], is an eloquent
and passionate collection of essays that highlights the global rise of
militarism and religious and racial violence, calling into question the
equation of nation and ethnicity. This brand new book is a great companion
to her brand new spoken word release Come September — In Conversation
with Howard Zinn. Looking to do business with the Burmese generals in "Myanmar"? Where else to look for advice than in all-good, no-bad $ingapore where money is not far from everyone’s mind. Myanmar On My Mind is a unique one-of-its-kind book written by the former First Secretary [Commercial] at the $ingapore embassy in Yangon, Matthew Sim. Sim’s tour of duty lasted from 1995 to 1997 and he offers first-hand insight into "the minds of the Myanmar people, from military generals and government officials to businessmen and employees." Sim was in charge of $ingapore’s trade and investments with Burma. On a sub-chapter, Spies And Spying, Sim wrote: "Manpower in Myanmar is relatively cheap and readily available. The Military Intelligence [MI], for example, is quite extensive and pervasive. As a result, prominent foreign diplomats and international businessmen in and around Yangon are always escorted by MI officers. "Both my telephone lines, one at the Embassy and one at home, were bugged. The technology used during my stay in Myanmar was pretty low-end. There was a hollow, echoing sound whenever you used the phone." Sim adds: "I have never been overtly concerned with Myanmar politics. It is neither an area of responsibility nor interest." Business to $ingaporean Sim is business and he says: "An international businessman should try not to mix politics and business. Money should not be coloured by politics." Published by Times Book International in 2001. If you are interested in learning more about $ingapore’s business relationship with the generals of Burma follow these links: $ingapore
is Burma’s biggest investor with between US$770 million to US$1.5
billion in 65 projects in the country [AP report Mar 25 1998]. $ingapore
to promote economic cooperation with Burma $ingapore
links 'aiding drug trade' Burma-$'pore
Axis: Globalising the heroin trade Goh leaves
Burma without meeting Suu Kyi $uspected
drug traders have S'pore connection $'pore backs
Burma in Asean-EU dialogue $'pore helps
Burma's spies Blood money:
hanging drug couriers but investing with their suppliers Protesters
demand accountability from PM Goh on drugs Asean reeks
of double standards For more... email mybigo@bigozine.com with the message, "Put me on your mailing list."
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WHERE
FREE SPEECH IS NOT FREE TALK TIME ON YOUR MOBILE
PIRATE BAY: WE DON'T WANT TO BE INFORMATION SLAVES
JACK
'KING' KIRBY
DO THE SONGS REMAIN THE SAME?
