These photographs of the legendary Chelsea Hotel, an epicenter of New York City’s cultural life for decades, as it undergoes a potentially soul-destroying transformation, look like stills from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining as re-imagined by Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre). Spooky, creepy and very sad.

From an article in Gothamist:

The landmarked hotel has been undergoing changes that no one seems to support (no one that doesn’t currently have stake in it)—residents have been practically forced out, rooms have been gutted, and a rooftop bar may soon be coming to the gorgeous oasis above 23rd Street, which is still home to a handful of people. (Yes, people live on the roof.)

Click through for what our photographer Sam Horine saw while inside—he tells us, “the vibe was depressing—very dark and dusty in the hallways… all the doors had plastic over them to keep out the dust. You could tell that the management had just quit doing anything for the long term residents a long time ago in an effort to encourage them to leave.” A security guard came along soon after and told him he could only go to the one room that he signed in to visit, and escorted him back there.”

Behind every chained and padlocked door: a story.
 

 

 
See more photos at Gothamist.

Thank you Mirgun.

 
Huh? Newt Gingrich is still dropping out of the Republican presidential primary race?

Wait a minute. I thought that… Didn’t he already drop out? Last week?

Is he doing it again?

Although it sure seemed like Gingrich pulled out last week, it was really just another coy act of Newtus interruptus. He didn’t technically drop out, drop out, last week, Gingrich was only giving the media some, er, polite advance notice that he was going to drop out next week, which is now this week. Then he was supposed to make the “big announcement” that no one gives a flying fuck about today, I’d read, but that didn’t occur either (not like all that mainstream media OWS coverage was exactly crowding him out, ostensibly this was a slow news day, wasn’t it?).

Pathetically, and perhaps in a last gasp desperate bid to give the world’s news media one final chance to send camera crews (or even just an unpaid intern) to cover this historic event, Newt told the “insiders” who are his “close personal friends” and supporters via an amateurish YouTube clip (see below) that tomorrow is now the big day that he will again announce the same thing he just said in the YouTube video and that we all already knew from last week. Is he milking this shit or what?

Tomorrow it’ll be officially, officially official:

We won’t have Newt Gingrich to kick around anymore.

Lest any non-American readers be confused by how such a hideous and disgusting human being as Newt Gingrich could become a Presidential candidate of one of the two major American political parties—and not merely a candidate, but briefly the front-runner—wonder no more: He never was a plausible candidate in the first place, certainly no more likely to end up with the GOP nod than Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain or Ron Paul.

American politicians tend to, uh, “ordain” themselves and Gingrich, who has always seen himself as a “great man” (despite all of the vast piles of historical evidence that show him to be a nasty, brutish, power-mad, egotistical, tantrum-prone, OCD philanderer without a self-reflexive bone in his body), felt his “calling” and blah, blah, blah, but make no mistake about it, Newton Leroy Gingrich never had an ice cube’s chance in Hell of becoming the leader of the free world, no matter how many times he CRAVENLY and TRANSPARENTLY invited comparisons to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan that NO ONE cared to make on his behalf or repeat, except to mock him!

As a candidate, Gingrich always was DOA. His brief front-runner status was puzzling, if not exactly all that alarming, because it was obviously so temporary and insignificant (In the end Gingrich received 2.5 million votes in a country of 300 million people, for a little perspective). That he got anywhere whatsoever is testament to his “fundamental” ORNERY VICIOUSNESS that appeals to the large, but dwindling, All-American demographic of older, Fox News-watching white dudes. For a brief, shining minute there, Newt looked like their knight in shining armor, the one who would say the nastiest things to that Kenyan Socialist occupying the White House.

Gingrich threw some red meat meanness to the idiots and they started barking and clapping like seals. Even dumbshit Sarah Palin got on board the Newt train, the low IQ “real America” seal of approval.

I’ll repeat myself for our non-American readers, Gingrich had no chance of ever getting elected President. None. Zero. Zip. His odds of becoming the POTUS were only slightly higher than yours or mine because he managed to convince a dimwitted billionaire casino magnate to drop MILLIONS OF DOLLARS on his pointless vanity candidacy and because, well, because fuckin’ South Carolina, ‘nuff said.

There is probably only but one man in America who seriously believed that Newton Leroy Gingrich could ever become the President of the United States and that one man also happens to be named Newton Leroy Gingrich. The idea that this repulsive, hypocritical turd would ever find himself in a position of elected power again, is, of course, preposterous on the face of it. Everyone—except say for Newt himself (and maybe Callista and maybe Sheldon Adelson) knew he was a no-hoper from the start. The only surprise for me was that he was taken more seriously by the media than either Buddy Roemer or Gary Johnson, both credible former GOP governors, both horses in the race with, you’d think, far better chances with voters than the decidedly unpopular Newt Gingrich. Hell, Scott Walker has a better chance of becoming president than Gingrich ever did.

Truly, it would have been fantastic to have seen Gingrich get the GOP nomination, strictly from the lulz perspective of seeing the Republicans utterly destroyed in a national election, but you’d have to sift through trillions upon trillions of alternate universes to find the one in which the pretty blonde “Stepford wife” Calista kissed a disgusting salamander that would turn into the POTUS (it’s a parallel dimension where gravity has failed, “fun” has been outlawed and Snookie is the Secretary of Spray Tans). It’s never, ever going to happen.

(If Gingrich’s presidential ambitions aren’t totally dead, my advice to him would be to become cryogenically frozen and then get himself defrosted a couple of hundred years from now like in Idiocracy. Under those circumstances, he might stand a chance! (As Paul Krugman memorably quipped about him, Newt Gingrich is a “stupid man’s idea of what a smart person sounds like.” Vicious, but too, too true.)

In the end, rest assured, dear “foreign” readers and make no mistake about it: If there was a devastating nuclear war and the sitting President—whoever he may be—his entire cabinet, every member of Congress and every single high ranking member of the US military were dead and Newt came forward from the political wilderness, just like his inspiration, Winston Churchill, and selflessly offered to lead a tattered and broken nation, the nearest person with a loaded gun and a lick of sense would shoot the guy right in the fucking face without a moment’s hesitation!

Newt Gingrich, we hardly knew ye! You’ve obviously got nowhere to go but… away.

Now piss off, you slimy amphibian. For good this time.
 

 
Tummy Touch is a label I’ve been a fan of since it started putting out records in the mid-90s. It has veered from the offbeat disco slackness of Tutto Matto and early Groove Armada to more recent “artist” based fare like the solo troubadour Tom Vek and the live sensation The Phenomenal Handclap Band, all the time being steered by the eccentric and “extravagantly bearded” dj Tim “Love” Lee.

The label’s website describes its sound as “Bohemian disco rock, sci-fi electro soul, unruly latin mash ups and oddball urban exotica”, and I’m not gonna argue with that, except to add that analog warmth is a key element of their sound. Oh, and that the split Groove Armada/Tim “Love” Lee twelve inch called “Disco Insert/Again Son” is one of my favourites from that period and should be in every discerning DJ’s box. “Again Son” in particular is a twisted delight, an early 90s breakbeat classic that samples a Christian preacher admonishing his own son to beat him “again, son… harder!”

Now based in New York as opposed to London, Tummy Touch is currently celebrating 15 years of releasing fine music by giving away a free compilation album, Fully Bearded: 15 Years Of Tummy Touch, featuring many of the labels best known acts remixed in a dub style.

This is simply some of the finest downtempo music around right now. From the Police-esque post-punk of Circuits and the psych-pop-funk of Bing Ji Ling, to the more dancefloor aimed grooves of New Young Pony Club and the previously mentioned Phenomenal Handclap Band, this is definitely worth a click of the mouse and the donation of your email address. 

In fairness, I should have posted this ages ago, as it went up on the Tummy Touch Facebook wall 3 weeks ago with a note that said it would available for a limited time only. Which I guess means you should just download it now before it gets yanked.
 

Image by Finsta

This has to be heard to be believed.

Boots Sex Dread is the name of an anonymous reggae act (is it a band or just and MC? or two MCs?) who brought out a one-off single in 1980 that became instantly notorious. Both sides of the release feature heavy dub riddims coupled with explicitly gay toasting. Like, REALLY explicit.

One side is titled “Rinka” and features an MC coming out: “Mi black and mi proud and mi a Rastafari/And mi a ‘omo-sek-shual”. There then follows an hilarious list of anal sex euphemisms. The flip is titled “Prenton Pressure” and features a different, coarse voiced MC regaling us with the story of how he met his Asian boyfriend, and how their sexual relations in a cornership store room (involving lots of bizarre condiments - Brillo Pads?!) were interrupted by the boyfriend’s mother.

Information on this record is scarce, but rumors about who the authors/vocalists may be have been rife since it was first written about in the NME on its 1980 release. The theory that has gained most credibility is that Boots Sex Dread is the work of the British comedian and actor Keith (father of Lily) Allen. An anonymous source close to Dangerous Minds can semi-confirm this:

It was rumored to be Keith Allen. And Rinka was supposed to be named after Norman Scott’s dog who was shot by the hit man hired by Jeremy Thorpe. [Background: Jeremy Thorpe was the leader of the British Liberal party from ‘67-‘76. Norman Scott claimed to be his gay lover, and Thorpe was aquitted on charges of conspiring to murder Scott in 1979.]

But this was the story running the rounds when Julie Burchill banged on about it as being gay Reggae. Not convinced, but it sounds like it could be him. He is an accomplished pianist, as I found out when I spent 3 nights on the batter with him, whilst he was filming Shallow Grave.

Keith had a character he played on Channel 4 late night back in the early 80s, where he played a gay miner, who’s dad was gay and his father before him, etc. Led to religious people saying he shouldn’t be allowed on TV etc, as they thought Keith was genuinely gay.

There a bit more info on this story over at the Uncarved blog. Here are sides A and B of Boots Sex Dread (even the names have been confused over time):

Boots Sex Dread “Rinka” NSFW
 

 
Boots Sex Dread “Penton Pressure” NSFW
 

 
Boots Sex Dread is rare as hens’ teeth, but it was re-issued not too long ago, so keep an eye out and you might find it.
 

Tom Morello at the May Day protest in NYC.
 
To get in the mood for his May Day appearance at New York City’s Union Square and a march with Occupy Guitararmy to Wall Street, Tom Morello, along with Ben Harper, played a scorching version of his song “Save The Hammer For The Man” on Jimmy Fallon’s show last night.

Save the hammer for the man, save the hammer for the man
You’re never too far down the wrong road
To turn back and change your plan
Save the hammer for the man

Morello is keeping protest music alive while also making it new.
 

Victims of a drone attack in Pakistan.
 
A Code Pink activist spoke truth to power yesterday when she confronted White House counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan as he addressed an audience at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars think tank. The woman was protesting drone strikes and the collateral damage of innocent people being killed.

“I’m here today because President Obama has instructed us to be more open with the American people about these efforts,” Brennan said. Well, that WOULD be nice, but it ain’t happening.

MSNBC reports:

Brennan on Monday spoke openly — and at great length — about what has long been one of the government’s most controversial official secrets:  the use of remotely piloted drones to kill suspected terrorists.

In doing so, he became the first U.S. government official to acknowledge that the drone strikes sometimes kill innocent people, though he characterized such deaths as “exceedingly rare.” But a new analysis by an independent Washington think tank estimates that more than 300 civilians have been killed by drones since President Barack Obama took office.

300 civilians killed to get how many alleged terrorists? And is the ratio worth living with? I think not.

The protester had to be dragged off by a security guy that looks about three times her size. She was fearless. Right on!
 

 
May Day action in New York City heats up as protesters and cops clash.

The Gothamist reports:

At least six people were arrested after hundreds of protesters streamed through the streets of Chinatown, SoHo, and eventually the West Village in a march that began with several violent arrests at Sarah Roosevelt Park and ended at Washington Square Park. For much of the march, the NYPD kept its distance as the demonstrators, many clad in black with their faces covered, overturned trash cans and newspaper boxes, and dragged NYPD barricades out into the street.

The police caught up with the protesters shortly before they crossed Houston heading north. One plainclothes officer stopped a protester from tampering with the undercarriage of a bus. Though these sort of “black bloc,” extralegal tactics were used by the protesters, no projectiles were thrown and no other property was destroyed, at least not that we witnessed. As we noted earlier (scroll down), some protesters were seen knocking photographers cameras out of their hands, and in one instance shooting black paint at a lens.

Several times police officers attempted to yank protesters onto the street from the sidewalk or the side of the street to be arrested, only to find other protesters pull them away from their grasp. Two protesters were thrown to the ground and arrested at West 4th and MacDougal, before police violently shoved photographers and media to a distance at least 20 feet away. At least six protesters were arrested during the march, which dispersed in the general direction of Union Square, where all the marches are converging for a rally this afternoon.

Looks like a series of bad moves by both the cops and the activists. It’s a shame, but deeds and not words seems to be the only way to get the media’s attention.

The march on Wall Street started at 5:30pm EST and rallies are planned downtown for 8pm.
 

 

 

 

 
Scroll down Dangerous Minds and watch a livestream of the rally in New York City.

Appropriately titled, “Grandpa’s MP3 Player”
 
He’s showin’ the yoots how it’s done.
 
Via KMFW

 
If you ever needed another reason to love dear Phil Lynott then just watch this short clip from Jim’ll Fix It - Jimmy Savile’s classic dreams-come-true TV series - from 1982, in which 70-year-old grandmother, May Booker wrote to Sir Jim asking if he could fix it for her to play keyboards with her favorite band - Thin Lizzy. And you can guess what happened next.

May is rather good, and she has a fun time with Phil - who is such a delightful charmer.
 

 
With thanks to Tara McGinley
 

 
British artist David Marsh uses swatch graphics in Adobe Illustrator to re-create iconic album covers. Each individual album artwork is made-up of 1369 Pantone swatches. 

I love how they’re still instantly recognizable.

David explains to DesignBoom:

The purpose of this series is my own exploration and development along with the satisfaction I have when I complete an image I like to experiment with image creation and will stumble onto a technique and develop that and then archive it and resurrect it when I have a purpose for it. I will develop this idea into various new directions, the next being actually painting some of the covers that work best, hopefully on a very large scale or using collage to create the image. the options are endless and that excites me.

There are many more Pantone album covers to check out on David’s website and prints are available for purchase there, too.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
This is a trip. What appears (at least to the guy who filmed it) to be footage of the New York Dolls playing at the Central Park Bandshell in 1973 is actually the Harlots Of 42nd Street fronted by Gene Harlot.

Despite getting the details wrong, the guy who shot the footage described its history with good humor and warmth:

Two young parents with a Super8, taking their young children out for a walk in Central Park in 1973. They lived on the east side and preferred listening to Perry Como and Bread. The children would later renounce this lamentable music upbringing and go see the Ramones in the early 1980s. Perhaps this brief vision of glam caused them to stray.

And what of the Harlots? This is what David Johansen had to say about the band:

We used to compete with the Harlots of 42nd Street which was a group of guys who looked like truck drivers but dressed like the Dolls and wore, like, fishnet stockings over these big muscular hairy legs. They were my favorite band.”

 

 
The Harlots of 42nd Street were a fixture at the legendary Coventry club in Queens, NY and various venues in Manhattan. They released a 45rpm record on the Sunburst label in 1974: “Cool Dude & Foxy Lady / Spray Paint Bandit.” They disbanded shortly after releasing the record.

This may be the only known footage of The Harlots. As mentioned earlier, the title credits are wrong. The fellow who shot the film also claims that the guy dancing in front of the stage is Lou Rawls. Must have been tripping.
 

 
For your listening pleasure: “Spray Paint Bandits.”

 
Personally, I think this is punk as fuck. Neil Young and Crazy Horse (Billy Talbot, Ralph Molina and Frank “Poncho” Sampedro) rock the garage with “Oh Susannah”—the first video from the new album Americana —coming June 5th.

The vintage film footage in the video is quite striking and may cause a bit of a stir. There’s a kid smoking in it. YouTube busted one of my videos (“88 Lines About 44 Women”) that had a kid smoking in it…but I’m not Neil Young.
 

 
Patti Smith and Lizzy Mercier Descloux as Arthur Rimbaud and his sister, Isabelle Rimbaud. Photographed in 1977 by Michel Esteban.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

Occupy Wall Street poster by Lalo Alcaraz

Some pretty amazing images turning up on this live feed. How much of this is anyone seeing via the major media outlets? Other than The Guardian’s coverage, I ain’t seeing much at all.
 

 
This is the transcript of a discussion that took place earlier this year between Noam Chomsky and Occupy supporters Mikal Kamil and Ian Escuela for InterOccupy, an organisation that provides links between supporters of the Occupy movement around the world.

Professor Chomsky, the Occupy movement is in its second phase. Three of our main goals are to: 1) occupy the mainstream and transition from the tents and into the hearts and the minds of the masses; 2) block the repression of the movement by protecting the right of the 99%‘s freedom of assembly and right to speak without being violently attacked; and 3) end corporate personhood. The three goals overlap and are interdependent.

We are interested in learning what your position is on mainstream filtering, the repression of civil liberties, and the role of money and politics as they relate to Occupy and the future of America.

Noam Chomsky: Coverage of Occupy has been mixed. At first it was dismissive, making fun of people involved as if they were just silly kids playing games and so on. But coverage changed. In fact, one of the really remarkable and almost spectacular successes of the Occupy movement is that it has simply changed the entire framework of discussion of many issues. There were things that were sort of known, but in the margins, hidden, which are now right up front – such as the imagery of the 99% and 1%; and the dramatic facts of sharply rising inequality over the past roughly 30 years, with wealth being concentrated in actually a small fraction of 1% of the population.

For the majority, real incomes have pretty much stagnated, sometimes declined. Benefits have also declined and work hours have gone up, and so on. It’s not third world misery, but it’s not what it ought to be in a rich society, the richest in the world, in fact, with plenty of wealth around, which people can see, just not in their pockets.

All of this has now been brought to the fore. You can say that it’s now almost a standard framework of discussion. Even the terminology is accepted. That’s a big shift.

Earlier this month, the Pew foundation released one of its annual polls surveying what people think is the greatest source of tension and conflict in American life. For the first time ever, concern over income inequality was way at the top. It’s not that the poll measured income inequality itself, but the degree to which public recognition, comprehension and understanding of the issue has gone up. That’s a tribute to the Occupy movement, which put this strikingly critical fact of modern life on the agenda so that people who may have known of it from their own personal experience see that they are not alone, that this is all of us. In fact, the US is off the spectrum on this. The inequalities have risen to historically unprecedented heights. In the words of the report: “The Occupy Wall Street movement no longer occupies Wall Street, but the issue of class conflict has captured a growing share of the national consciousness. A new Pew Research Center survey of 2,048 adults finds that about two-thirds of the public (66%) believes there are “very strong” or “strong” conflicts between the rich and the poor – an increase of 19 percentage points since 2009.”

Meanwhile, coverage of the Occupy movement itself has been varied. In some places – for example, parts of the business press – there has been fairly sympathetic coverage occasionally. Of course, the general picture has been: “Why don’t they go home and let us get on with our work?” “Where is their political programme?” “How do they fit into the mainstream structure of how things are supposed to change?” And so on.

And then came the repression, which of course was inevitable. It was pretty clearly coordinated across the country. Some of it was brutal, other places less so, and there has been kind of a stand-off. Some occupations have, in effect, been removed. Others have filtered back in some other form. Some of the things have been covered, like the use of pepper spray, and so on. But a lot of it, again, is just, “Why don’t they go away and leave us alone?” That’s to be anticipated.

The question of how to respond to it – the primary way is one of the points that you made: reaching out to bring into the general Occupation, in a metaphorical sense, to bring in much wider sectors of the population. There is a lot of sympathy for the goals and aims of the Occupy movement. They are quite high in polls, in fact. But that’s a big step short from engaging people in it. It has to become part of their lives, something they think they can do something about. So it’s necessary to get out to where people live. That means not just sending a message, but if possible, and it would be hard, to try to spread and deepen one of the real achievements of the movement that doesn’t get discussed much in the media – at least, I haven’t seen it. One of the main achievements has been to create communities – real functioning communities of mutual support, democratic interchange, care for one another, and so on. This is highly significant, especially in a society like ours in which people tend to be very isolated and neighbourhoods are broken down, community structures have broken down, people are kind of alone.

There’s an ideology that takes a lot of effort to implant: it’s so inhuman that it’s hard to get into people’s heads, the ideology to just take care of yourself and forget about anyone else. An extreme version is the Ayn Rand version. Actually, there has been an effort for 150 years, literally, to try to impose that way of thinking on people.

During the onset of the industrial revolution in eastern Massachusetts, mid-19th century, there happened to be a very lively press run by working people, young women in the factories, artisans in the mills, and so on. They had their own press that was very interesting, very widely read and had a lot of support. And they bitterly condemned the way the industrial system was taking away their freedom and liberty and imposing on them rigid hierarchical structures that they didn’t want. One of their main complaints was what they called “the new spirit of the age: gain wealth forgetting all but self”. For 150 years there have been massive efforts to try to impose “the new spirit of the age” on people. But it’s so inhuman that there’s a lot of resistance, and it continues.

One of the real achievements of the Occupy movement, I think, has been to develop a real manifestation of rejection of this in a very striking way. The people involved are not in it for themselves. They’re in it for one another, for the broader society and for future generations. The bonds and associations being formed, if they can persist and if they can be brought into the wider community, would be the real defence against the inevitable repression with its sometimes violent manifestations.

How best do you think the Occupy movement should go about engaging in these, what methods should be employed, and do you think it would be prudent to actually have space to decentralise bases of operation?

Noam Chomsky: It would certainly make sense to have spaces, whether they should be open public spaces or not. To what extent they should be is a kind of a tactical decision that has to be made on the basis of a close evaluation of circumstances, the degree of support, the degree of opposition. They’re different for different places, and I don’t know of any general statement.

As for methods, people in this country have problems and concerns, and if they can be helped to feel that these problems and concerns are part of a broader movement of people who support them and who they support, well then it can take off. There is no single way of doing it. There is no one answer.

You might go into a neighbourhood and find that their concerns may be as simple as a traffic light on the street where kids cross to go to school. Or maybe their concerns are to prevent people from being tossed out of their homes on foreclosures.

Or maybe it’s to try to develop community-based enterprises, which are not at all inconceivable – enterprises owned and managed by the workforce and the community which can then overcome the choice of some remote multinational and board of directors made out of banks to shift production somewhere else. These are real, very live issues happening all the time. And it can be done. Actually, a lot of it is being done in scattered ways.

A whole range of other things can be done, such as addressing police brutality and civic corruption. The reconstruction of media so that it comes right out of the communities, is perfectly possible. People can have a live media system that’s community-based, ethnic-based, labour-based and [reflecting] other groupings. All of that can be done. It takes work and it can bring people together.

Actually, I’ve seen things done in various places that are models of what could be followed. I’ll give you an example. I happened to be in Brazil a couple of years ago and I was spending some time with Lula, the former president of Brazil, but this was before he was elected president. He was a labour activist. We travelled around together. One day he took me out to a suburb of Rio. The suburbs of Brazil are where most of the poor people live.

They have semi-tropical weather there, and the evening Lula took me out there were a lot of people in the public square. Around 9pm, prime TV time, a small group of media professionals from the town had set up a truck in the middle of the square. Their truck had a TV screen above it that presented skits and plays written and acted by people in the community. Some of them were for fun, but others addressed serious issues such as debt and Aids. As people gathered in the square, the actors walked around with microphones asking people to comment on the material that had been presented. They were filmed commenting and were shown on the screen for other people to see it.

People sitting in a small bar nearby or walking in the streets began reacting, and in no time you had interesting interchanges and discussions among people about quite serious topics, topics that are part of their lives.

Well, if it can be done in a poor Brazilian slum, we can certainly do it in many other places. I’m not suggesting we do just that, but these are the kinds of things that can be done to engage broader sectors and give people a reason to feel that they can be a part of the formation of communities and the development of serious programmes adapted to whatever the serious needs happen to be.

From very simple things up to starting a new socio-economic system with worker- and community-run enterprises, a whole range of things is possible. The more active public support there is the better defence there is against repression and violence.

How do you assess the goals of the Democratic party as far as co-opting the movement, and what should we be vigilant and looking out for?

Noam Chomsky: The Republican party abandoned the pretence of being a political party years ago. They are committed, so uniformly and with such dedication, to tiny sectors of power and profit that they’re hardly a political party any more. They have a catechism they have to repeat like a caricature of the old Communist party. They have to do something to get a voting constituency. Of course, they can’t get it from the 1%, to use the imagery, so they have been mobilising sectors of the population that were always there, but not politically organised very well – religious evangelicals, nativists who are terrified that their rights and country are being taken away, and so on.

The Democrats are a little bit different and have different constituencies, but they are following pretty much the same path as the Republicans. The centrist Democrats of today, the ones who essentially run the party, are pretty much the moderate Republicans of a generation ago and they are now kind of the mainstream of the Democrat party. They are going to try to organise and mobilise – co-opt, if you like – the constituency that’s in their interest. They have pretty much abandoned the white working-class; it’s rather striking to see. So that’s barely part of their constituency at this point, which is a pretty sad development. They will try to mobilise Hispanics, blacks and progressives. They’ll try to reach out to the Occupy movement.

Organised labour is still part of the Democratic constituency and they’ll try to co-opt them; and with Occupy, it’s just the same as all the others. The political leadership will pat them on the head and say: “I’m for you, vote for me.” The people involved will have to understand that maybe they’ll do something for you, that only if you maintain substantial pressure can you get elected leadership to do things – but they are not going to do it on their own, with very rare exceptions.

As far as money and politics are concerned, it’s hard to beat the comment of the great political financier Mark Hanna. About a century ago, he was asked what was important in politics. He answered: “The first is money, the second one is money and I’ve forgotten what the third one is.”

That was a century ago. Today it’s much more extreme. So yes, concentrated wealth will, of course, try to use its wealth and power to take over the political system as much as possible, and to run it and do what it wants, etc. The public has to find ways to struggle against that.

Centuries ago, political theorists such as David Hume, in one of his foundations for government, pointed out correctly that power is in the hands of the governed and not the governors. This is true for a feudal society, a military state or a parliamentary democracy. Power is in the hands of the governed. The only way the rulers can overcome that is by control of opinions and attitudes.

Hume was right in the mid-18th century. What he said remains true today. The power is in the hands of the general population. There are massive efforts to control it by less force today because of the many rights that have been won. Methods now are by propaganda, consumerism, stirring up ethnic hatred, all kinds of ways. Sure, that will always go on but we have to find ways to resist it.

There is nothing wrong with giving tentative support to a particular candidate as long as that person is doing what you want. But it would be a more democratic society if we could also recall them without a huge effort. There are other ways of pressuring candidates. There is a fine line between doing that and being co-opted, mobilised to serve someone else’s interest. But those are just constant decisions and choices that have to be made.

Extracted from Occupy by Noam Chomsky, published by the Zuccotti Park Press and the Occupied Media Pamphlet Series in the US and Canada.

NYPD have a “discussion” with OWS protesters in 2011

Last night, several Occupy Wall Street activists were paid a visit at their homes by the NYPD who wanted to inquire about the activities they had planned for today’s mass protests. Gawker’s Adrian Chen reports that Gideon Oliver, the New York Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild’s president, told him, “They were asking what are your May Day plans, do you know who the leaders are—these are classic political surveillance questions.”

In the first case: activist Zachary Dempster said that six NYPD officers broke down the door of his Bushwick, Brooklyn apartment at around 6:15am this morning. Dempster said they were armed with a warrant for the arrest of his roommate, musician Joe Crow Ryan, for a six-year-old open container violation. But Dempster believes this was an excuse to check in on him, as he’d been arrested in February at an Occupy Wall Street Party that was broken up by cops, and charged with assaulting a police office and inciting a riot.

WTF? SIX COPS knocked this guy’s fucking door down for a SIX-YEAR-OLD OPEN CONTAINER VIOLATION??? Talk about a flimsy excuse for a SIX COP RAID!

They got a warrant and broke a door down because of a 2006 misdemeanor? (Or is it merely an infraction?) Remarkable!

That will teach that Communist hippie about cracking open a beer in public!

That they were able to secure a warrant to break the door down is something I hope to hear Mayor Bloomberg forced to explain…

After running his ID, a detective questioned Dempster in his bedroom for about five minutes about tomorrow’s May Day protest, he said.

“They asked what I was doing tomorrow, and if I knew of any activities, any events—that was how the conversation started,” Dempster said. Dempster said he’s not planning doing much, as his case from February is still open. Dempster’s roommate was also asked about him and May Day.

About an hour later, an activist friend of Dempster’s who runs in anarchist circles said his apartment in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, where he lives with a half-dozen other activists and Occupy Wall Street organizers was visited by six NYPD cops—possibly the same ones. The activist said police used arrest warrants for two men who no longer lived there as pretext for the raid. The officers ran the IDs of everyone who was in the apartment, then booked our source when they discovered he had an outstanding open container violation. Police never asked about Occupy Wall Street or May Day, but our source said the message was clear: We’re watching you.

Another open container violation? This is real “my dog ate my homework” shit, isn’t it? Open container violations! Imagine having your door knocked down by six police officers for a jay-walking ticket you didn’t pay.

“We obviously don’t think it’s an accident that it happened the day before May Day, where people in the house are organizers,” he said.

This afternoon, NYPD also visited the home of Greek anarchist artist Georgia Sagri, who has been part of Occupy Wall Street from the beginning and led the occupation of a SoHo art gallery last October. Turns out she was giving a press conference about May Day at Zuccotti Park at the time. Police waited for about an hour outside her home, then left.

“My roommate gave me a call and told me the NYPD was looking for me,” Sagri said. “Since that time, I didn’t go home. So I’m basically on the street. My May Day has already started which is fine, I don’t mind.” She said she has no idea why NYPD visited her.

This isn’t the first time NYPD has been criticized for aggressive surveillance of protesters: The NYPD infiltrated activist groups around the country before 2004’s New York Ciy Republican National Convention. And The New York Times has ably detailed the extent to which NYPD has harassed and spied on Occupy Wall Street protesters.

“The intention behind this I’m sure is to try to create fear and silence dissent,” said Marina Sitrin, a lawyer and member of Occupy Wall Street’s legal working group, “and to keep people from coming out into the streets.”

There are several marches, blockades and acts of civil disobedience planned across New York City today. From what I can tell via what precocious few media reports there have been, the rain is ending in the city and the protests are now starting to really gear up in Times Square, in front of Fox News and in the business district. If you can’t support the actions because you can’t get out of work, there is a mass rally expected in lower Manhattan after the work day.

Interesting to note (and I’m basing this observation from sampling through the live “Occupy Wall Street Superchannel” at UStream) the protests this time are more diffuse and spread out all over New York. Whereas it may not make for the same sort of TV-ready drama that attempts to close the Brooklyn Bridge off did last year, it makes the NYPD’s job a lot harder. You can “bottle,” contain and squeeze a large group, but it’s much harder to do anything about hundred of sites happening at once. Nice to see that the tactics are evolving.

 
We’ve known it for years, but now it’s official - “Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of major international company”. This is the damning summation of a UK Government Select Committee report into the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. 

The Commons Culture, Media and Sport committee also accused Rupert Murdoch of “wilful blindness” towards the wrongdoing in his organization, and that there had been “huge failings of corporate governance”, whose sole aim was “to cover up rather than seek out wrongdoing and discipline the perpetrators”.

The report accused 3 former senior executives from News International - Les Hinton, Colin Myler, and Tom Crone - of misleading the committee during its inquiries into Hackgate.

James Murdoch’s competence was called into question, and he was said to have had a “wilful ignorance” about events at News International and the News of the World.

But the most damning indictment was made against Rupert “Digger” Murdoch, the report concluded:

“On the basis of the facts and evidence before the committee, we conclude that, if at all relevant times Rupert Murdoch did not take steps to become fully informed about phone hacking, he turned a blind eye and exhibited wilful blindness to what was going on in his companies and publications.

“This culture, we consider, permeated from the top throughout the organisation and speaks volumes about the lack of effective corporate governance at News Corporation and News International.

“We conclude, therefore, that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company.”

Read more on the story at the Guardian and at the Daily Telegraph

Read the full 125 page Select Committee Report into the Phone Hacking Scandal here.
 

 
Spanish pop star and provocateur Albert Plá croons among the ‘shrooms in this psychedelic video in which his prick takes on a life of its own - a dilemma a great number of men are familiar with.

Exactly what kind of mushrooms are those?

Plá is a big deal in Spain and I can see why. Well-hongos.
 

 
Living in New York City in the 1980s one could not help but be suffused with the sounds emitting from beat boxes tuned to the dance party grooves of Kiss F.M. - it was the sound of the city. Sadly, KISS is no more. The powers that be pulled the plug on the station and 98.7 on the dial is now a sports channel.

Birthplace Magazine reports:

DJ Red Alert, a pioneering radio icon responsible for helping launch the careers of dozens of hip hop artists, broadcast for the last time from New York’s KISS-FM, his radio home during the early days of hip hop and throughout the years. The station, WRKS (98.7), announced a change in format on April, 26, 2012, shocking KISS-FM listeners who had been tuning in for decades.

ESPN has now taken over the frequency while former station rival WBLS (107.5) will “absorb” the KISS-FM branding. It is unclear how much of 98.7′s KISS staff will also move down the dial.

“Kool” DJ Red Alert, along with his WBLS counterparts Mr. Magic and Marley Marl, helped usher in what is often considered hip hop’s “Golden Era,” bringing rap music to New York’s airwaves in a groundbreaking way. Besides being a DJ for artists and groups such as Afrika Bambaata and KRS-One, Red Alert was also personally responsible for managing and breaking artists like the Jungle Brothers, A Tribe Called Quest and Queen Latifah.

The Bronx Hall of Fame member became emotional during his final 49 minute-long mix, thanking staff at Kiss-FM. “Lord gave me the best. I respect y’all. I thank y’all. Y’all don’t understand how I feel. I love y’all.” Red Alert said, his voice breaking down. He then ended his long broadcasting career at 98.7, speaking to his listening audience, many who have grown up listening to Red’s familiar voice, distinctive style and custom catchphrases, telling them, “Once again, I’m signing off. 98.7, Kiss-FM. God bless each and every one of y’all. I’m outta here.”

A little bit of New York City died over the weekend. Reminisce on this: Red Alert’s goodbye KISS - a mix in two parts.
 

 
Happy May Day, comrades!

Albert Einstein’s famous essay on socialism was originally published in the first issue of Monthly Review in May 1949.

Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is.

Let us first consider the question from the point of view of scientific knowledge. It might appear that there are no essential methodological differences between astronomy and economics: scientists in both fields attempt to discover laws of general acceptability for a circumscribed group of phenomena in order to make the interconnection of these phenomena as clearly understandable as possible. But in reality such methodological differences do exist. The discovery of general laws in the field of economics is made difficult by the circumstance that observed economic phenomena are often affected by many factors which are very hard to evaluate separately. In addition, the experience which has accumulated since the beginning of the so-called civilized period of human history has—as is well known—been largely influenced and limited by causes which are by no means exclusively economic in nature. For example, most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution and created a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior.

But historic tradition is, so to speak, of yesterday; nowhere have we really overcome what Thorstein Veblen called “the predatory phase” of human development. The observable economic facts belong to that phase and even such laws as we can derive from them are not applicable to other phases. Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future.

Second, socialism is directed towards a social-ethical end. Science, however, cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends. But the ends themselves are conceived by personalities with lofty ethical ideals and—if these ends are not stillborn, but vital and vigorous—are adopted and carried forward by those many human beings who, half unconsciously, determine the slow evolution of society.

For these reasons, we should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society.

Innumerable voices have been asserting for some time now that human society is passing through a crisis, that its stability has been gravely shattered. It is characteristic of such a situation that individuals feel indifferent or even hostile toward the group, small or large, to which they belong. In order to illustrate my meaning, let me record here a personal experience. I recently discussed with an intelligent and well-disposed man the threat of another war, which in my opinion would seriously endanger the existence of mankind, and I remarked that only a supra-national organization would offer protection from that danger. Thereupon my visitor, very calmly and coolly, said to me: “Why are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race?”

I am sure that as little as a century ago no one would have so lightly made a statement of this kind. It is the statement of a man who has striven in vain to attain an equilibrium within himself and has more or less lost hope of succeeding. It is the expression of a painful solitude and isolation from which so many people are suffering in these days. What is the cause? Is there a way out?

It is easy to raise such questions, but difficult to answer them with any degree of assurance. I must try, however, as best I can, although I am very conscious of the fact that our feelings and strivings are often contradictory and obscure and that they cannot be expressed in easy and simple formulas.

Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life. Only the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting, strivings accounts for the special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual can achieve an inner equilibrium and can contribute to the well-being of society. It is quite possible that the relative strength of these two drives is, in the main, fixed by inheritance. But the personality that finally emerges is largely formed by the environment in which a man happens to find himself during his development, by the structure of the society in which he grows up, by the tradition of that society, and by its appraisal of particular types of behavior. The abstract concept “society” means to the individual human being the sum total of his direct and indirect relations to his contemporaries and to all the people of earlier generations. The individual is able to think, feel, strive, and work by himself; but he depends so much upon society—in his physical, intellectual, and emotional existence—that it is impossible to think of him, or to understand him, outside the framework of society. It is “society” which provides man with food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of thought; his life is made possible through the labor and the accomplishments of the many millions past and present who are all hidden behind the small word “society.”

It is evident, therefore, that the dependence of the individual upon society is a fact of nature which cannot be abolished—just as in the case of ants and bees. However, while the whole life process of ants and bees is fixed down to the smallest detail by rigid, hereditary instincts, the social pattern and interrelationships of human beings are very variable and susceptible to change. Memory, the capacity to make new combinations, the gift of oral communication have made possible developments among human being which are not dictated by biological necessities. Such developments manifest themselves in traditions, institutions, and organizations; in literature; in scientific and engineering accomplishments; in works of art. This explains how it happens that, in a certain sense, man can influence his life through his own conduct, and that in this process conscious thinking and wanting can play a part.

Man acquires at birth, through heredity, a biological constitution which we must consider fixed and unalterable, including the natural urges which are characteristic of the human species. In addition, during his lifetime, he acquires a cultural constitution which he adopts from society through communication and through many other types of influences. It is this cultural constitution which, with the passage of time, is subject to change and which determines to a very large extent the relationship between the individual and society. Modern anthropology has taught us, through comparative investigation of so-called primitive cultures, that the social behavior of human beings may differ greatly, depending upon prevailing cultural patterns and the types of organization which predominate in society. It is on this that those who are striving to improve the lot of man may ground their hopes: human beings are not condemned, because of their biological constitution, to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate.

If we ask ourselves how the structure of society and the cultural attitude of man should be changed in order to make human life as satisfying as possible, we should constantly be conscious of the fact that there are certain conditions which we are unable to modify. As mentioned before, the biological nature of man is, for all practical purposes, not subject to change. Furthermore, technological and demographic developments of the last few centuries have created conditions which are here to stay. In relatively densely settled populations with the goods which are indispensable to their continued existence, an extreme division of labor and a highly-centralized productive apparatus are absolutely necessary. The time—which, looking back, seems so idyllic—is gone forever when individuals or relatively small groups could be completely self-sufficient. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that mankind constitutes even now a planetary community of production and consumption.

I have now reached the point where I may indicate briefly what to me constitutes the essence of the crisis of our time. It concerns the relationship of the individual to society. The individual has become more conscious than ever of his dependence upon society. But he does not experience this dependence as a positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence. Moreover, his position in society is such that the egotistical drives of his make-up are constantly being accentuated, while his social drives, which are by nature weaker, progressively deteriorate. All human beings, whatever their position in society, are suffering from this process of deterioration. Unknowingly prisoners of their own egotism, they feel insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment of life. Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.

The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor—not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. In this respect, it is important to realize that the means of production—that is to say, the entire productive capacity that is needed for producing consumer goods as well as additional capital goods—may legally be, and for the most part are, the private property of individuals.

For the sake of simplicity, in the discussion that follows I shall call “workers” all those who do not share in the ownership of the means of production—although this does not quite correspond to the customary use of the term. The owner of the means of production is in a position to purchase the labor power of the worker. By using the means of production, the worker produces new goods which become the property of the capitalist. The essential point about this process is the relation between what the worker produces and what he is paid, both measured in terms of real value. Insofar as the labor contract is “free,” what the worker receives is determined not by the real value of the goods he produces, but by his minimum needs and by the capitalists’ requirements for labor power in relation to the number of workers competing for jobs. It is important to understand that even in theory the payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.

Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job.

Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.

The situation prevailing in an economy based on the private ownership of capital is thus characterized by two main principles: first, means of production (capital) are privately owned and the owners dispose of them as they see fit; second, the labor contract is free. Of course, there is no such thing as a pure capitalist society in this sense. In particular, it should be noted that the workers, through long and bitter political struggles, have succeeded in securing a somewhat improved form of the “free labor contract” for certain categories of workers. But taken as a whole, the present day economy does not differ much from “pure” capitalism.

Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers’ goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before.

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?

Clarity about the aims and problems of socialism is of greatest significance in our age of transition. Since, under present circumstances, free and unhindered discussion of these problems has come under a powerful taboo, I consider the foundation of this magazine to be an important public service.
 

 
The flip side: Why Socialism? This Guy Einstein is an Idiot (a rebuttal)