Disagreement over a George W. Bush backdrop has caused Trent Reznor to cancel a Nine Inch Nails performance scheduled for the MTV Movie Awards. The giant photograph of Bush appears (unedited) while NIN are performing The Hand That Feeds. MTV believes in its own brand of rock, one which does not provoke controversy or challenge intellects, and decided that the backdrop would not be allowed. In a statement on NIN.com, Reznor says:
Apparently the image of our President is as offensive to MTV as it is to me.
Popularity: 6% [?]
One week ago, the South African Mail & Guardian (one of the few remaining quality newspapers in the country) revealed how the ruling African National Congress (ANC) political party secretly received funds of approximately one million British pounds from a state oil company. Several senior ANC figures were implicated in the scandal. This week, as the latest edition of the Mail & Guardian was rolling off the presses, the ANC obtained a court order and effectively barred the newspaper from publishing more information on the scandal. Not since the darkest days of apartheid have the South African press suffered such totalitarian abuse.
From an article in the British Guardian, previously the Mail & Guardian’s parent newspaper:
Police surrounded the presses of the Mail & Guardian (M&G) on Thursday night to prevent publication of new allegations of what has become known as the “oilgate” corruption story.
The ANC has denied any wrongdoing. ANC spokesman Smuts Ngonyama said the party was not aware of, or concerned by, the origins of the funds[...].
The M&G is South Africa’s leading investigative newspaper. In the apartheid years it carried numerous accounts of human rights abuses and corruption by the regime. It defied censorship rules designed to suppress news of the ANC’s struggle against white rule and the brutality used by the apartheid government to hold on to power.
The new gagging order is the first time the paper has been muzzled since the apartheid state banned the M&G under emergency regulations in the late 1980s, according to a statement from the paper.
Censorship of the press in an ostensibly free and democratic country like South Africa is simply not acceptable. The ANC have proven themselves as corrupt and inefficient as any African despotic regime.
This is how the Mail & Guardian report was forced to appear, if the newspaper was to appear at all (click for a larger version):
Popularity: 13% [?]
More commonly known as “Hero” in the West, Ying Xiong is a truly breathtaking film, cutting a hallucinogenic swathe of colour through the ballet that Jet Li has made of martial arts. Poncy to a degree, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon this isn’t. But it’s good, perhaps great, even when the extrelely violent fight scenes don’t deliver the blood and gore they promise. This is an ideal alternative for when someone suggests a ten hour Merchant/Ivory weepathon: all the tender emotion you want, garnished with enough balls to make this an outstanding production in the martial arts genre.
I would say Ying Xiong easily warrants 8 / 10.
Buy this at Amazon.
Popularity: 14% [?]
Director Edward Zwick serves up a visual treat in this oriental cowboys ‘n Indians flick, Billy Connolly excels—as always—at playing the drunken Scotsman, and the dwarfish Tom Cruise plays a samurai with such confidence that viewers can be excused for being convinced he has a dick at least two feet long. Lots of faux-testosterone drama about men finding themselves, proving their manhood and magically being absolved of all past evils. Sort of like Scrooge on Christmas morning, but without the goose for Tiny Tim.
Overall, worth a 7 / 10.
Buy this at Amazon.
Popularity: 14% [?]
Newsweek’s retraction of a story claiming that Guantanomo Bay guards flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet led many supporters of White House policy to believe the claim to be false. In fact, Newsweek could not verify the claim, and therefore could not state it as fact. And, unless a Guantanamo guard or interrogator admits to this (or is stupid enough to take photographs of incriminating scenes, as has happened several times in Iraq), the claim will probably never be confirmed.
However, a recently declassified FBI report (compiled in 2002) at the very least corroborates the claim that a Koran might have been placed inside a toilet at the Guantanomo Bay facility. The report states: “About five months ago, the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Koran in the toilet.” Of course, these are the very subjective claims of a prisoner, but believable weighed against the existence of many other claims of mistreatment.
In addition, anyone familiar with Islamic culture would know that devout Muslims hold the Koran in great esteem as a holy book, and would not expect Muslims to make up claims like this. Defiling the Koran would be unthinkable, as would lying about it (even if it would bring your enemies into disrepute). So, when placed in context, and considering that the US military employs psychological warfare experts to come up with tactics exactly like this, the claims apparently hold true. A sad day for enlightened people everywhere.
Update: Guantanamo prison commander Brigadier General Jay Hood has revealed that investigations have uncovered 13 separate allegations of abuse of the Koran by prison guards and interrogators, although he denies that a Koran was ever flushed down a toilet. This doesn’t sound physically possible anyway, so we can probably discount this as a rumour or threat, but fact remains that abuse of the Koran (or threats of abuse) was used to put psychological pressure on prisoners of war under United States care, in violation of the Geneva Convention.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Sometimes, people just have too much free time. The image below (click for a larger version) was created by a deviantART user called Diamonster, using nothing but Microsoft Paint and the blurring filter in Photoshop.
For more work by the talented Diamonster be sure to check out his deviantART home page.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Perhaps the best quote from the whole Bush-led war on Iraq comes from British anti-war campaigner and member of parliament George Galloway. During American Senate hearings on the oil-for-food scandal (in which a majority of the people implicated happens to be American citizens), Galloway responded as follows to accusations that he had met with Saddam Hussein:
”[I have met with Saddam] exactly as many times as Donald Rumsfeld has met with him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and give him maps.”
Update: For a more balanced context of Gorgeous George, also take a look at Christopher Hitchens’s article in the Weekly Standard entitled Unmitigated Galloway.
Popularity: 7% [?]
In his a review of Robert Wohl’s The Spectacle of Flight in The Guardian, JG Ballard laments the loss of the amazing in air travel:
The miracle and wonder of flight, which has inspired poets, philosophers and madmen, has dwindled into a workaday procedure that we anticipate with the same enthusiasm we feel when we visit the dentist. At least the space age ended on a note of mystery that still surrounds the Moon flights. We know what happened inside the Apollo spacecraft, but what went on in the astronauts’ minds, and did they ever recover from their strange journeys? Nasa still holds their secret, perhaps the first stage of its evolution into a religious organisation, something that British Airways is never likely to achieve.
Popularity: 8% [?]
I’ve classified the fabulous 100 Words or Less Nessman project as Literature, but who knows. YMMV. The concept is simple. In their own words:
Each day brings a new theme, and each theme brings 100 words of fiction from the authors. If anyone cops out on a theme, they have to post something about Les Nessman. Why? Why the hell not?
So dust off your pencil and word-counting abacus, Min, and get scribbling.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Long-time readers of Wired generally agree: it ain’t what it used to be. But a comment piece on sleaze and porn by Regina Lynn plunges new depths, punctuating heavily rationalized calls for censorship with emotional cries of “Will somebody PLEASE think of the children?”
In her review of Gil Reavill’s book Smut (his bona fides include having worked for Screw), she defends his view of the anti-social nature of filth on the Net:
When you live in a community, you have to make some adjustments that aren’t required if you live 10 miles from your nearest neighbor. It’s rude to let your car alarm blare all day, to play your music at top volume late at night and to send your dog down the street to defecate on someone else’s lawn.
Likewise, it’s rude to force your sexual expression on folks who don’t want to see it. I doubt you would be thrilled if I barged into your house and wallpapered your dining room with Michael Brandon posters without your permission.
Nice metaphor. But how exactly does the Internet come into my home to do wallpapering? Can it clean my windows? The act of typing in a URL, often something generally descriptive of female anatomy and applications thereof, navigating the usual maze of links leading to more pages filled with popup-spawning porn links, and eventually perhaps finding something filthy enough to be worth the bother, can’t really be compared to the metaphor of porn quietly slipping into homes to corrupt children. On the Net, I choose how far or close I want to be to my neighbours, and my neighbours have exactly the same choice. Getting out your old raincoat and taking the bus downtown to visit your favourite porn merchant, that’s the right metaphor. To get porn on the Net you have to look for it. Perhaps you don’t have to look too hard, unless it’s your first day out, but you do have to look.
I’m not talking about porn spam here. Lynn does include it: “when you check your e-mail and you have spam sporting subject lines about incest, bestiality and statutory rape”. Yet I think we pretty much all agree that spam is a problem. Not spam about incest, or spam about widgets from China. Just spam. But is porn a surreptitious evil creaping into our homes? Quite simply, no. It’s not, and never has been.
To be fair, Lynn does admit that her “personal taste in porn runs to the hard-core and the kinky”. She’s no prude, and isn’t advocating a conservative-style blanket censorship. But I do think she’s overreacting. Parents have never been able to completely shield their children from information, and digital pornography is just another form of information. Children have always been able to discover the non-existence of Santa Claus, and in the same way they will always be exposed to pornography in some way or the other. This isn’t great, but it’s not the end of the world either. It’s just one of the disadvantages parents will have to weigh against the innumerable advantages of living in a world where information does indeed want to be free. Free as in speech, not porn.
Popularity: 9% [?]
The tiny Eastern European republic of Molvania has been thrown into disarray after having their entry for the Eurovision Song Contest disqualified. Zladko “Zlad” Vladcik got the boot after Turkish authorities discovered recreational drugs in his luggage. Back in Molvania he humbly apologised to “his family, his friends and his dealer”.
[No, Molvania isn’t real. Moldavia sort of is. Go figure.]
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The periodic table of elements, reinterpreted by Cobb County. This spoof appears in the May/June 2005 issue of The Skeptical Inquirer. Do consider subscribing.
[Found by way of Mike the Mad Biologist.]
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Apart from Salon’s regular incisive and well-reasoned commentary, there’s also Tom the Dancing Bug. Creator Ruben Bolling’s cartoons alone are well worth the subscription.
Popularity: 7% [?]
In case you, your friends or your family are still wavering over whether or not to switch to Firefox as your primary browser, Funnyfox has compiled three excellent arguments for people left unswayed by the hard, technical facts.
Popularity: 7% [?]
I remember when I first heard the music of the Buena Vista Social Club in 1997, played to me by a co-worker. Sweet, lilting Cuban sounds, evoking a simpler and more romantic period before organized crime and politics changed the Cuban cultural landscape. A period of wealthy Spanish land owners, of slaves dreaming of freedom and hoping for a better future, of cigars hand-rolled on the thighs of virgins, the scent of orchids on the afternoon breeze. This was long before the madness, the cheap knock-off Cuban remixes, the recording industry-fueled feeding frenzy of latin compilations. To get a copy of the album in South Africa I had to ask my father-in-law to buy it for me in New York.
Even after it became popular, the music held its charm for me. Hearing it played in clubs where teenagers hang out, or in burger bars or on the train could not ruin it for me. The music still had that same something special, even after nearly eight years.
But now rumours have surfaced of an uglier side to the album. A court battle in London between two companies disputing ownership of the copyright to the original music has led to allegations of the composers receiving “at most a few pesos and maybe a drink of rum”. The Cuban company Editora Musical de Cuba (EMC) claims that copyright owners have not been paid for the use of their works, while the US-based Peer International Corporation (now apparently called PeerMusic) claim to have held the money in trust for the Cuban composers.
From the Guardian Unlimited:
For EMC, Peter Prescott QC said in papers submitted to the court that Peer’s claims to the music of more than 600 Cuban composers were all invalid.
“We shall demonstrate that these contracts were so cunningly contrived as to allow the publishers to get away with paying the composers practically nothing,” he said. “The composers in this case received nothing or, at most, a few pesos and maybe a drink of rum.”
Hopefully the simple beauty of the music can withstand the mudslinging and legal wrangling to follow. More ugliness can be expected as the case continues.
Popularity: 12% [?]
