From UPDATE: A Spanish judge has approved a probe of torture complaints against former Bush officials. Details below...
Six Bush-era officials responsible for crafting the legal justifications permitting the military prison at Guantanamo Bay are the subject of a Spanish criminal probe which could place the men under serious risk of arrest if they travel outside the United States.
"[Spanish newspaper] Público identifies the targets as University of California law professor John Yoo, former Department of Defense general counsel William J. Haynes II (now a lawyer working for Chevron), former vice presidential chief-of-staff David Addington, former attorney general and White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, now a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and former Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith," noted Scott Horton at Harper's.
He called them Bush's "torture lawyers."
On March 17, Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, published an editorial in the Washington Note which accused Bush officials of knowingly holding innocent men in Guantanamo Bay for years.
"The case was sent to the prosecutor's office for review by Baltasar Garzón, the crusading investigative judge who indicted the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet," reported the New York Times. "The official said that it was 'highly probable' that the case would go forward and could lead to arrest warrants."
If the judge decides to open an investigation, it will be the first such legal action outside the United States, the private Cadena Sur radio said.
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Monday, March 30, 2009
Spanish official says arrest warrants 'highly probable'
Amnesty: Alleged abuses in the context of policing demonstrations in Greece
30 March 2009
Call on the Greek government to set up an independent commission of inquiry
Greek police shot and killed 15-year-old Alexandros-Andreas (Alexis) Gregoropoulos in Athens on 6 December 2008. A longstanding history of human rights violations committed by police in Greece was highlighted by the shooting and by the conduct of officers policing subsequent demonstrations in December 2008 and January 2009.
Following these events, Amnesty International has received numerous reports of such violations by police in the context of policing the protests, including excessive use of force and firearms, torture and other ill-treatment, arbitrary detention and denial of prompt access to legal assistance. Complaints of such violations have also been received from children.
Amnesty International believes that the authorities' response to the killing of Alexis Gregoropoulos and the protests which erupted in the aftermath of his death should not end with the ongoing police and judicial investigations.
In this context, a strong message must be sent to the Greek government that no one can be above the law - especially those charged with enforcing it.
Take ActionJoin Amnesty International in urging the Greek government to set up an independent commission of inquiry, mandated to investigate the full circumstances surrounding the death of Alexis Gregoropoulos and the police response to the demonstrations and the riots that began on 6 December.
IMAGE: Greek riot police threatening the use of firearms against demonstrators, Athens, Greece, 7 December 2008, © Kostas Tsironis
~ Amnesty International ~
Issues with TaxDayTeaParty.com - Explanation
Written by mmeckler on March 29, 2009 - 8:44 pm
http://taxdayteapar
An international effort to shut down the TaxDayTeaParty.
Unfortunately, these DOS attacks are very difficult to trace. In this case, the attacks have come from both domestic and international sources. All we know for certain at this point is that a group of people want to stop this movement. We will not allow this to happen. This citizens´ movement will not be stopped.
We will be issuing an official press release on this issue on Monday, March 30th.
Sunday, March 29th - TaxDayTeaParty.
Sounds good? Check out who's supporting this.
Makes one wonder about who tries to hijack all the good ideas.
Revealed: police databank on thousands of protesters (UK)
From a report by Paul Lewis and Marc Vallée in The Guardian :
"Shocking footage shot by police, accompanied by their own critical commentary, shows how their officers monitored campaigners and the media – and demanded personal information – at last August's climate camp demonstration in Kent Link to this video"
Films and details of campaigners and journalists may breach Human Rights Act
" ...Disclosures through the Freedom of Information Act, court testimony, an interview with a senior Met officer and police surveillance footage obtained by the Guardian have established that private information about activists gathered through surveillance is being stored without the knowledge of the people monitored.
Police surveillance teams are also targeting journalists who cover demonstrations, and are believed to have monitored members of the press during at least eight protests over the last year.
The Guardian has found:
•Activists "seen on a regular basis" as well as those deemed on the "periphery" of demonstrations are included on the police databases, regardless of whether they have been convicted or arrested.
•Names, political associations and photographs of protesters from across the political spectrum – from campaigners against the third runway at Heathrow to anti-war activists – are catalogued.
•Police forces are exchanging information about protesters stored on their intelligence systems, enabling officers from different forces to search which political events an individual has attended.
Lawyers said tonight they expect the Guardian's investigation to form the basis of a legal challenge against the use of police surveillance tactics.
Liberty, the human rights group, is challenging the police surveillance tactics in a judicial review at the court of appeal. But police appear not to have disclosed to the court that they were transferring private details of campaigners to a database. ..."
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Sleeper
From the Woody Allen classic
From the film's Wikipedia entry :
Different cuts of the movie
There are two known cuts of Sleeper. The first, seemingly original cut, contains a dinner scene shortly after Miles (Allen) and Luna (Keaton) return to the house where Miles was originally taken after revival. In the dialogue-less scene, Miles eats in time with a piano soundtrack while Luna watches him in amazement. In another cut distributed in the US, this scene is absent but another, in which Miles shaves using a high-tech mirror and accidentally tunes into the view from the mirror in another bathroom, is present in its place. The latter cut is on the MGM 2000 DVD, which has both a widescreen and full-screen version of the film, a trailer, Spanish dubbing, and French subtitles.
The network television version cuts the scene in which Miles and Luna discover a 1990's newspaper with the headline "Pope's Wife Gives Birth to Twins".
From The Sleeper Revived by Laurel Petriello
Having experienced a short-lived fame revival, the house is perhaps best recalled as the setting of Woody Allen’s 1973 sci-fi cult classic, Sleeper. Beyond its pop culture celebrity, the Sculptured House became nothing more than a dilapidated haven for various wildlife, teenage boredom and vandalism.
The house lay dormant for over 30 years at the time of Charles Deaton’s death in December 1996. Additionally, the first incarnation of his vision, the original plaster mold of the house was accidentally knocked over and destroyed at his funeral service.
Cut to the scene where Prince Charming wakes the sleeping princess. John Huggins, a Colorado native and Internet software millionaire, was fascinated by the proverbial house on the hill since he was a child. In 1999, he purchased the Sculptured House for $1.3 million with the intent to restore and complete construction.
Working closely with Deaton’s daughter, Charlee, and her husband, architect Nick Antonopoulos, Deaton’s former protégé, Huggins succeeded in completing the home according to Deaton’s original plans. Huggins was faithful to Deaton’s design while adding modern creature comforts. The finished product included a 5000-square-foot addition originally drafted by Deaton, featuring a five-car underground garage, caretaker quarters, media room and massive patio, among others.
Seed ball story
by Jim Bones
The story of how to make and use seed balls for reforestation, arid land rehabilitation and agriculture based on the ideas of Masanobu Fukuoka
Chance in art
From Stumbling over / upon art by Dario Gamboni
One classical interpretation of “chance in art” is that of the “image made by chance.”2 The phenomenon is documented across times and cultures and can be understood as a particularly explicit manifestation of the active, cognitive (or “projective”) nature of visual perception. In fact, the earliest known “image” associated with humans—or rather pre-humans—, the pebble found at Makapansgat in South Africa, is supposed to have been selected, transported, and preserved some three million years ago because it happened to look like a face.3 Rather than the first work of art, it can claim to be the first Readymade, as one commentator facetiously remarked.4 Depending on the current views of the origin and working of the universe, such “images” have been attributed to the gods, God, or some other supernatural beings; to Nature acting as an artist or to her blind mechanical laws; or to man’s own eye and mind, the human imagination, or the “unconscious.”
Ferrous pebble of reddish color found in 1925 at Makapansgat, South Africa. Bernard Price Institute of Paleontology, University of Witwaterrsand, Johannesburg. Photo Robert G. Bednarik.
The last group of interpretations, which could be labeled “endogenic,” first gained prominence in Late Antiquity and the Renaissance, and has dominated the Western understanding of this question from the late eighteenth century to the present.5 Despite its apparently monistic character, it does retain a crucial element of the earlier “exogenic” interpretations: for the accidental image to be perceived as an image, a “sender” must be at least implicitly postulated by the receiver.6 If this sender is situated in the receiver, it becomes an Other within the subject. This explains the connection between chance images and Freud’s notion of “the uncanny” (das Unheimliche) and the fascination they have exerted upon the Surrealists.
From Chance in art - The indeterminacy aesthetic 2 by Andrew Bogle
Crucial to all forms of divination, including those involving indeterminate configurations, is the empirical concept of acausal synchronicity - the orderedness of events which has no intelligible cause. This holds that all things are interconnected by a complex web of relations - from the smallest blade of grass to the remotest star; and that any given moment, any event is inextricably related to every other event. The significance of such an attitude is that it accepts multiple perspectives of events in place of a narrow one-point perspective. Consistent with such a premise is the use by contemporary artists of oracular, ludic and other aleatoric techniques as a means of relinquishing some cognitive control over the creative act, thereby bringing some 'magical' contingencies of the transient moment into play.
The Christchurch artist John Hurrell by using dice to select permutations of prescribed set of geometric shapes and colours within an over-all grid structure for his Dice Pieces paintings, is literally working in an aleatoric mode. The stark geometry, hard edges and flat unmodulated colours of Hurrell's Dice Pieces belie their fortuitous composition. First the artist sketched his grid plan on paper; then ran off a series of duplicates. Next he decided on a range of variables (triangle lozenge, diamond, assorted colours) with which to 'flesh out' the skeleton structure. By ascribing numbers to the variables, tossing dice and recording the results on the paper plans, a final composition was divined. Only later was the design scaled up, transposed to canvas and painted in, The indeterminate part of the process was relegated to the plotting of the composition, not to the execution. In the final stage the use of masking tape and unmodulated colours minimised gestural irregularities. Any two or more paintings produced by this process, all conditions being equal, will look fundamentally similar, but differ in detail, in the same way that dalmatian pups from a litter or assorted snow crystals are at once homogeneous and yet unique.
From Chance and Necessity - Selections from the Kentler Flatfiles by Isabelle Dervaux
Several drawings in the exhibition are based on nature, not as a source of observation and transformation, but through a process involving direct contact with a natural element. Thus Martin Zet's Sea Drawings are literally produced by the motion of waves washing over the sheets of paper that he places on the sand or stones near a body of water, while Florence Neal's large, evocative charcoal drawings are rubbings of tree bark. Such methods recall surrealist practices, including coulage and frottage, which gave an important role to chance in artistic creation. But unlike the surrealists, for whom such practices were often a starting point to stimulate their imagination and develop new imagery, Zet and Neal preserve the drawings as they first emerge from the random process. With the precision of scientists making an experiment, both artists carefully record the geographical spot where each drawing was created, as well as, in the case of Neal, the species of tree from which the rubbing was made.
Rather than a specific style, what unites all of these works are the notions of process and chance. The result may suggest spontaneity and raw impulse, but the carefully planned methodology and the systematic recording of the conditions in which they were executed also relate these works to the kind of abstraction more obviously based on structures and systems. It is significant that several of the artists in this exhibition have mentioned the importance of John Cage in their development. Cage’s revolutionary introduction of the element of chance in art, as well as the priority he gave to process over structure, opened the door to a wide range of new possibilities, in the visual arts as well as in music. Richard Howe, for example, acknowledged the influence on his drawings of his experience working on Cage’s scores in the 1960s. Howe’s teeming compositions call to mind the ambiguous relationship between order and chaos that was central to Cage’s theory and practice.
Turning to artists whose drawings rely more directly on the codified language of geometric structures, one notices that their predetermined order is often balanced by some element of indetermination. Thus Mary Judge’s elegant symmetrical patterns derive their organic quality from the medium--powdered pigment--which is applied in such a way that each line, made of irregular dots, acquires a life of its own. Despite the regularity of the motifs, the drawings are vibrant with a sense of unpredictability--a feature that is alluded to in a title like Automatic Drawing, with its reference to another surrealist device involving chance.
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - 'Must nazron se Allah bachaye'
Lyrics:
http://pakizm.com/nusrat/mastnazron.htm
[ via Soraya ]
FKN Newz - Debt for ever
FKN Newz Blog - http://www.main.fknnewz.com/blog/index.php
Debt Bomb in Wall Street , no one dead, no one injured ,no one bothered. Drug war fuelled by high profits and stating the obvious says Hilary clinton. Peace is 'enduring goal' says Netanyahu: a piece of palestine lebbanon,syria etc
In the UK terror fairy tale grows and spying becomes a way of life for 1000s
Hello disparate ineffective voices, welcome to the fkn news Im fat bald and ugly here are the headlies tonight....
image from http://www.spitting-image.net
