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I think Lucky is a spy... in cahoots with the mouse

inter species WAR

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Take Me Back Box & Cause Célèbre 20th Reunion

Auckland's most famous and influential nightclub, Box & Cause Célèbre, is reuniting for one night only! The Queen City's original nightclub pioneers are getting back together for a Special 20th Anniversary Party. The promoters, the players, the DJs and the doormen will all be there. The line-up reads like a Who's Who of Auckland Nightclubbing...

Nathan Haines Quartet featuring Joel Haines
Bluespeak featuring Greg Johnson
The Lawrence Quintet featuring Peter Urlich
Rob Salmon
Greg Churchill
Roger Perry
Bevan Keys
Manuel Bundy
Soane
Timmy Schumacher
Sam Hill and Sample Gee
Anthony Gold
James Chesterman
Gerhardt Pierard

For eight years, from 1989-1997, the Box & Cause Célèbre was the epicentre of the New Zealand nightclub scene. Twenty years later, its status is justifiably legendary, with a dedicated Facebook group and the number of folks who claim to have been there all those years back growing year by year.

The Box was a cultural hotbed for Auckland's evolution as an international, cosmopolitan city. It was clubbing for adults - mixing art, fashion and a broader musical palette, from jazz and blues to hip hop and techno. It made the concept of nightclubbing accessible, being the first club to embrace Auckland's multi-cultural diversity, as well as its colourful gay scene.

With a new attitude and new music, Box & Cause Célèbre became the showcase for Auckland after dark, and also won favour as the first choice destination for visiting international stars.

Many of the musicians and personalities who cut their teeth in the club - including Greg Churchill, Bevan Keys, Nathan Haines, Peter Urlich, Sam Hill, Sample Gee, Roger Perry, Manuel Bundy and Soane - still dominate Auckland's nightlife today.

These seasoned performers, along with Sydney based Box legend Rob Salmon and Los Angeles based Célèbre crooner Greg Johnson, needed little encouragement to add their names to the line-up for the Box & Cause Célèbre 20th Reunion - titled "Take Me Back", after Rhythmatic's classic 12", released in 1990.

Because, for many people, what made the Box & Célèbre special was that it was a family, with a sense of camaraderie and kinship that revolved around the people who worked there, the people who spent so many nights there, and the music.

"Take Me Back"
Box & Cause Célèbre 20th Reunion
Saturday 27 June @ The Studio, 340 Karangahape Rd

Rest In Peace Michael Jackson

Pop giant Michael Jackson, who took to the stage as a child star and set the world dancing to exuberant rhythms for decades has died.

"Pop star Michael Jackson was pronounced dead by doctors this afternoon after arriving at a hospital in a deep coma, city and law enforcement sources told The Times," the LA Times newspaper reported on its website.

TVNZ

Wikipedia

How we see the world

Clouds are grey

Andy Hughes, electronic music producer/DJ who was born 11th November 1965 and, and who lived and grew up in Harrow, Middlesex, tragically passed away on Friday 12th June 2009 after a short illness.

Andy was a genius who gave so much inspiration and passion to all with his incredible work. He was loved by many aficionados of the trance/ambient genre, but will be especially remembered for his work with Alex Paterson and The Orb, most notably the album Orblivion and single Toxygene, which reached number 4 in the UK charts in 1997. Together with his musical partners Alex Patterson and former members Kris Weston, Simon Phillips and Thomas Fehlmann together with Nick Burton of Westworld fame, Andy created electronic and ambient/techno/house/dub masterpieces. These took him across the globe where he played to masses of fans in countries including the USA, Japan and Canada as well as a sell out concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 1998.

In 2000 he started producing music on his own and more recently produced music for artists such as Kovak and Basement Jaxx at their neighbouring studios in Brixton, London.

Andy was an incredibly doting and loving father who always made time for his children Gabriel and Circe and their father’s passing will leave a chasm in both their lives…

At just 44 years of age, Andy Hughes’ death is a tragic one, and his contributions and advancements to electronic music won’t be quickly forgotten.

Iran Had a Democracy Before We Took It Away

By Chris Hedges

Iranians do not need or want us to teach them about liberty and representative government. They have long embodied this struggle. It is we who need to be taught. It was Washington that orchestrated the 1953 coup to topple Iran’s democratically elected government, the first in the Middle East, and install the compliant shah in power. It was Washington that forced Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, a man who cared as much for his country as he did for the rule of law and democracy, to spend the rest of his life under house arrest. We gave to the Iranian people the corrupt regime of the shah and his savage secret police and the primitive clerics that rose out of the swamp of the dictator’s Iran. Iranians know they once had a democracy until we took it away.

The fundamental problem in the Middle East is not a degenerate and corrupt Islam. The fundamental problem is a degenerate and corrupt Christendom. We have not brought freedom and democracy and enlightenment to the Muslim world. We have brought the opposite. We have used the iron fist of the American military to implant our oil companies in Iraq, occupy Afghanistan and ensure that the region is submissive and cowed. We have supported a government in Israel that has carried out egregious war crimes in Lebanon and Gaza and is daily stealing ever greater portions of Palestinian land. We have established a network of military bases, some the size of small cities, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Kuwait, and we have secured basing rights in the Gulf states of Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. We have expanded our military operations to Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Egypt, Algeria and Yemen. And no one naively believes, except perhaps us, that we have any intention of leaving.

We are the biggest problem in the Middle East. We have through our cruelty and violence created and legitimized the Mahmoud Ahmadinejads and the Osama bin Ladens. The longer we lurch around the region dropping iron fragmentation bombs and seizing Muslim land the more these monsters, reflections of our own distorted image, will proliferate. The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote that “the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy.” But our hypocrisy no longer fools anyone but ourselves. It will ensure our imperial and economic collapse.

The history of modern Iran is the history of a people battling tyranny. These tyrants were almost always propped up and funded by foreign powers. This suppression and distortion of legitimate democratic movements over the decades resulted in the 1979 revolution that brought the Iranian clerics to power, unleashing another tragic cycle of Iranian resistance.

“The central story of Iran over the last 200 years has been national humiliation at the hands of foreign powers who have subjugated and looted the country,” Stephen Kinzer, the author of “All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror,” told me. “For a long time the perpetrators were the British and Russians. Beginning in 1953, the United States began taking over that role. In that year, the American and British secret services overthrew an elected government, wiped away Iranian democracy, and set the country on the path to dictatorship.”

“Then, in the 1980s, the U.S. sided with Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war, providing him with military equipment and intelligence that helped make it possible for his army to kill hundreds of thousands of Iranians,” Kinzer said. “Given this history, the moral credibility of the U.S. to pose as a promoter of democracy in Iran is close to nil.

Especially ludicrous is the sight of people in Washington calling for intervention on behalf of democracy in Iran when just last year they were calling for the bombing of Iran. If they had had their way then, many of the brave protesters on the streets of Tehran today—the ones they hold up as heroes of democracy—would be dead now.”

Washington has never recovered from the loss of Iran—something our intelligence services never saw coming. The overthrow of the shah, the humiliation of the embassy hostages, the laborious piecing together of tiny shreds of paper from classified embassy documents to expose America’s venal role in thwarting democratic movements in Iran and the region, allowed the outside world to see the dark heart of the American empire. Washington has demonized Iran ever since, painting it as an irrational and barbaric country filled with primitive, religious zealots. But Iranians, as these street protests illustrate, have proved in recent years far more courageous in the defense of democracy than most Americans.

Where were we when our election was stolen from us in 2000 by Republican operatives and a Supreme Court that overturned all legal precedent to anoint George W. Bush president? Did tens of thousands of us fill the squares of our major cities and denounce the fraud? Did we mobilize day after day to restore transparency and accountability to our election process? Did we fight back with the same courage and tenacity as the citizens of Iran? Did Al Gore defy the power elite and, as opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi has done, demand a recount at the risk of being killed?

President Obama retreated in his Cairo speech into our spectacular moral nihilism, suggesting that our crimes matched the crimes of Iran, that there is, in his words, "a tumultuous history between us." He went on: "In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government. Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians." It all, he seemed to say, balances out.

I am no friend of the Iranian regime, which helped create and arm Hezbollah, is certainly meddling in Iraq, has persecuted human rights activists, gays, women and religious and ethnic minorities, embraces racism and intolerance and uses its power to deny popular will. But I do not remember Iran orchestrating a coup in the United States to replace an elected government with a brutal dictator who for decades persecuted, assassinated and imprisoned democracy activists. I do not remember Iran arming and funding a neighboring state to wage war against our country. Iran never shot down one of our passenger jets as did the USS Vincennes-caustically nicknamed Robocruiser by the crews of other American vessels-when in June 1988 it fired missiles at an Airbus filled with Iranian civilians, killing everyone on board. Iran is not sponsoring terrorism within the United States, as our intelligence services currently do in Iran. The attacks on Iranian soil include suicide bombings, kidnappings, beheadings, sabotage and "targeted assassinations" of government officials, scientists and other Iranian leaders. What would we do if the situation was reversed? How would we react if Iran carried out these policies against us?

We are, and have long been, the primary engine for radicalism in the Middle East. The greatest favor we can do for democracy activists in Iran, as well as in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf and the dictatorships that dot North Africa, is withdraw our troops from the region and begin to speak to Iranians and the rest of the Muslim world in the civilized language of diplomacy, respect and mutual interests. The longer we cling to the doomed doctrine of permanent war the more we give credibility to the extremists who need, indeed yearn for, an enemy that speaks in their crude slogans of nationalist cant and violence. The louder the Israelis and their idiot allies in Washington call for the bombing of Iran to thwart its nuclear ambitions, the happier are the bankrupt clerics who are ordering the beating and murder of demonstrators. We may laugh when crowds supporting Ahmadinejad call us "the Great Satan," but there is a very palpable reality that has informed the terrible algebra of their hatred.

Our intoxication with our military prowess blinds us to all possibilities of hope and mutual cooperation. It was Mohammed Khatami, the president of Iran from 1997 to 2005-perhaps the only honorable Middle East leader of our time-whose refusal to countenance violence by his own supporters led to the demise of his lofty "civil society" at the hands of more ruthless, less scrupulous opponents. It was Khatami who proclaimed that "the death of even one Jew is a crime." And we sputtered back to this great and civilized man the primitive slogans of all deformed militarists. We were captive, as all bigots are, to our demons, and could not hear any sound but our own shouting. It is time to banish these demons. It is time to stand not with the helmeted goons who beat protesters, not with those in the Pentagon who make endless wars, but with the unarmed demonstrators in Iran who daily show us what we must become.

The fight of the Iranian people is our fight. And, perhaps for the first time, we can match our actions to our ideals. We have no right under post-Nuremberg laws to occupy Iraq or Afghanistan. These occupations are defined by these statutes as criminal "wars of aggression." They are war crimes. We have no right to use force, including the state-sponsored terrorism we unleash on Iran, to turn the Middle East into a private gas station for our large oil companies. We have no right to empower Israel's continuing occupation of Palestine, a flagrant violation of international law. The resistance you see in Iran will not end until Iranians, and all those burdened with repression in the Middle East, free themselves from the tyranny that comes from within and without. Let us, for once, be on the side of those who share our democratic ideals.

Chris Hedges, whose weekly column for www.Truthdig.com is published every Monday, is currently a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and a Lecturer in the Council of the Humanities and the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University. He spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. Hedges, who has reported from more than 50 countries, worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, where he spent fifteen years. Please visit Chris Hedges, archives at Truthdig.

Can't argue with that, or can we?

Do We Really Care About Democracy? #IranElection

By Charting Stocks

After being victims of multiple false and propagandistic media campaigns one would think that we would be able to read between the lines when our mainstream media sources act in lockstep with one another in marketing the agenda du jour.

Have we already forgotten the “flowers and candy” which the gracious Iraqi people were going to greet us with? You know, as “Liberators.” The weapons of mass destruction? The fear campaign waged against us to surrender our national treasure to a few Wall Street firms? When the mainstream media moves together in uniform, repeating the same talking points, it’s time to get suspicious, not complacent.

As soon as Ahmadinejad was declared the victor in Iran’s election EACH of our mainstream media sources were ready to cry foul and dismiss the results as an “obvious” fraud (see links below). One might think that a functioning media would produce ONE inquisitive reporter that was brave enough to even entertain the idea that Ahmadinejad, the incumbent with extremely high support in the country’s rural and poor areas, actually won. Unfortunately, we don’t have reporters like that in our mainstream media (which is why their readership continues to plummet).

If you doubt that the Iranian election media bombardment was deliberate, ask yourself - Do you know who won last months Panamanian election ? Did you even know there was an election? It’s not your fault if you don’t. Actually, I don’t see how you could know without a functioning media.
Have you heard much about the democratic elections in Saudi Arabia lately? Of course not. They don’t have elections. Any media outrage for the people of Saudi Arabia? A country ruled by one of the most repressive regimes on the planet. But hey, they’re our allies. We don’t talk about them (and certainly won’t tweet it).

What about the 2006 (monitored) democratic election in Gaza in which the people resisted western threats and bribes and elected Hamas as their leader? We responded by punishing the people of Gaza and cutting aid to the region. Well, they committed a supreme crime. They voted the wrong way and must be punished for it. I’m waiting for a sympathetic #GazaElection hashtag on Twitter, though I won’t hold my breathe.

Have you heard ANYTHING from the mainstream media of the democratically elected governments that we REMOVED? The fact is that we don’t care about democratic elections.
Dr. Michael Parenti, is one of the nations leading political scholars. In his book “Against Empire,” Parenti tells us that “The United States has overthrown democratically elected governments in Guatemala, Guyana, The Dominican Republic, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Syria, Indonesia, Greece, Argentina, Bolivia, Haiti, and numerous other nations were overthrown by pro-capitalist militaries that were funded and aided by the US national security state.”
The #IranElection hype has nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with effecting US public opinion. Why are “Iranian’s” microblogging in English and on Twitter (which they do NOT use)? According to Mehdi Yahyanejad, manager of a Farsi-language news site based in Los Angeles, “Twitter’s impact inside Iran is zero..here, there is lots of buzz, but once you look . . . you see most of it are Americans tweeting among themselves.” The Alexa rankings confirm that Twitter’s penetration in Iran is nearly 0%.

The United States is the last country on earth that Iran wants attention from. They certainly don’t want us involved in their elections. We’ve already removed a democratically elected government in Iran during the 1953 coup d’etat of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq. I’d venture to guess that most of the people expressing sympathy for the “Iranian Students” on twitter would have a hard time finding Iran on a map. Those that could would quickly realize that on either side Iran’s borders lies 2 countries which we are very familiar with - Iraq and Afghanistan. Both of which are militarily occupied by our armies. Both ruled by our puppet governments.

Ask yourself - If Iran’s army invaded and occupied both Canada and Mexico, would we want their “Help”? Would we find popular Iranian websites and keep them informed of our nation’s vulnerabilities in their native Farsi?

The media campaign, however obvious it is to some of us, has probably been successful. I’ll bet that if you poll the American people today (and they probably will), you’d find that 40-50% would support military involvement in Iran to “Help” with their elections. I’d also assume that those 40-50% are the same people (more or less) who believed we invaded Iraq because of 9-11, another testament to the effectiveness of propaganda marketing.

The Instant “Analysis”:

Reuters Iran’s election result staggers analysts
Hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defeated moderate challenger Mirhossein Mousavi by a surprisingly wide margin in Iran’s presidential election, official results showed on Saturday. Mousavi derided the tally as a “dangerous charade.’

Fox News: U.S. Monitoring Iran’s Election Results
U.S. officials are casting doubt over the results of Iran’s election, in which the government declared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner Saturday…U.S. analysts find it “not credible [Notice the usual UN-NAMED "US Officials and Analysts]

MSNBC: Violence flares as Ahmadinejad wins Iran vote
Riot police battled with protesters Saturday as officials announced that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won a landslide election victory. His opponent denounced the results as ‘treason’….Ahmadinejad had the apparent backing of the ruling theocracy.

CNN: Ahmadinejad wins landslide in disputed election
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been declared the big winner in the country’s election, but his chief rival and supporters in the Tehran streets are crying foul.

NY Times: Ahmadinejad Is Declared Victor in Iran
The Iranian government declared an outright election victory for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday morning, and riot police officers fought with supporters of the opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, who insisted that the election had been stolen.

Time Magazine: Protests Greet Ahmadinejad Win in Iran: ‘It’s Not Possible!
Iran’s Interior Minister announced Saturday that incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won 63.29% of the vote in the nation’s closely watched presidential poll. The announcement, greeted with widespread skepticism by Iranian opposition supporters and by foreign analysts, has brought thousands of people onto the streets where they have encountered a strong police presence and the threat of violence.

Morning can be the hardest time

Double Kate

New Stink Finger Guest Mix

Rare as hens teeth Stink Finger hosted mixes... cause them chaps are useless and have rubbish taste... so without further adieu I am proud to present to you:

McBean - Cosas Grandes

Cosas Grandes is lubricatedly brought to you by the insideout rolls at Samurai Sushi, pushing your dog in a pram up Oxford Street, bootygurn, the smell of petrol, eternally quivering okonomiyaki and takoyaki shaving garnish, 8am harvey wallbangers, haloumi cheese n’ fresh lime; and would not have been possible without the House and Techno music of jungles, bunkers, squats, favelas, Fubars, Womb, Lov.e, helicopter pads, Cobb Valleys, K Roads, Big Glass Boats and Hawkes Bay vineyards worldwide.

Get It Here

Are You Ready For War With Demonized Iran?

Americans and Europeans have been misreading Iran for 30 years. Even after the shah fell, the myth has survived that a mass movement of people exists demanding liberalization — a movement that if encouraged by the West eventually would form a majority and rule the country. We call this outlook “iPod liberalism,” the idea that anyone who listens to rock ‘n’ roll on an iPod, writes blogs and knows what it means to Twitter must be an enthusiastic supporter of Western liberalism. Even more significantly, this outlook fails to recognize that iPod owners represent a small minority in Iran — a country that is poor, pious and content on the whole with the revolution forged 30 years ago.

There are undoubtedly people who want to liberalize the Iranian regime. They are to be found among the professional classes in Tehran, as well as among students. Many speak English, making them accessible to the touring journalists, diplomats and intelligence people who pass through. They are the ones who can speak to Westerners, and they are the ones willing to speak to Westerners. And these people give Westerners a wildly distorted view of Iran. They can create the impression that a fantastic liberalization is at hand — but not when you realize that iPod-owning Anglophones are not exactly the majority in Iran.

www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090615_western_misconceptions_meet_iranian_reality

give peas a chance

146 Crass Songs added to the bobpod

That is a hell of a lot of anger... had to dump a bunch of Pet Shop Boys remixes to make space

I find this quite amusing

This is Darling from Stations of Crass, one of my fave songs of theirs.




www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crass

www.southern.com/southern/band/CRASS

Sometimes it isn't about the brew

http://chrisknox.blogtown.co.nz

Ever get the feeling

You need a holiday?

I get it every workday

weird

Wireless Networks rock.. for a reason

I fought the puter and I won, eventually

Computers

Arghhhh, I am trying to get two computers to talk to one another...

The two in question I get to chat about once a year and can never remember how I got them to 'talk' the last time....

Should be super easy but for some reason it is not

Every time I do this I am reminded that I have little patience for this and am consequently yelling, swearing and pulling my hair out

Dammit puters talk

talk goddamit

The Great Leap Backwards

go go National you're doing yourselves, not the country, proud.

Big Questions For Wednesday

Breaks

I've been having a current affairs reading break -clearing the head if you will....

I'm not sure it is a good thing

Started with a new ISP, so far... all is good

*Huge sigh of relief*

Outlook fine

Fill your head with alcohol

Comic Books and Drugs

this is the way..... the only way to be

Sunday

Bunch of chores to do... standard

Getting up and ignoring said chores in favour for day of mooching, a sunday favourite

*yawns and stretches*

Awesome

Let's face it, as far as the hairy-legged lesbians in the Labour Party are concerned, it's a crime to be male. You're no longer safe in your own home.

I am reminded of an acquaintance of mine -- let's call him an acquaintance -- who opened his door to street hawkers. Why should he support an organization that won't have him as a member? Who can blame him for "introducing them to Mr Johnson"? Why should he buy their stupid biscuits that aren't even chocolate?

We can all guess what happened next. The police and somebody calling herself "Brown Owl" arrived at his doorstep.

Notice how they're always brown?

http://publicaddress.net/5951#post5951

Pooooooooooooooooooooooo

Cold

Must be winter then

Yep...

Oh Yeah

Back to school

A Day off for the Queen