FROM ATTYTOOD: The cool graphic comes from a Web site urging that Pulitzer Prize-winning AP photographer Bilal Hussein, detained by U.S. forces in Iraq for 19 months, be released unless he can be charged and tried under American standards of criminal justice. The site is called FreeBilal.org, and you can sign a petition calling for Bilal’s release. I have signed it, and I urge anyone else who cares about a free press that is keeping Americans informed, and about the applying the rule of law to all people, to sign it as well. The head of the Associated Press, Tom […]
NEWS CLUES: It’s Like Adderall For Your Eyeballs
LOLLAPALOOKAVILLE: Texans Bail On Belmont, Please Touch Say ‘Please Don’t’ The Austin, Texas, outfit that proposed a three-day pop festival for Belmont Plateau in August has withdrawn the bid and is pursuing alternative plans, park officials said today. A competing proposal from Larry Magid’s Electric Factory Concerts has not been withdrawn, Magid said late today, although he added that he had strong reservations about the site. Magid said today that a scaled-down, two-day event in and around the Mann Music Center might be more appropriate. And in a letter to the park last week, he suggested that June might be […]
THE VELS: Look My Way
Chris Larkin played keyboards for the most prominent line-up of Kenn Kweder’s Secret Kidds in the late 1970s (the one that recorded the “Man on the Moon” 45), was in a short-lived jazz fusion group called Snow, played in a duo with Kweder as “Tom & Jim,” did some producing (including Kweder’s 2nd 7″, and some tracks by The Impossible Years), was a keyboardist, singer and songwriter for electropop trio The Vels, who recorded for Mercury Records, and in the late 1980s played bass for Mikey Wild and the Mess. Chris passed away due to complications from pneumonia & liver […]
Public Service Announcement: The Naked & The Dead
CLICK TO ENLARGE, if you dare.
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Investigative reporter Mark Schapiro explains in a new book that toxic chemicals exist in many of the products we handle every day — agents that can cause cancer, genetic damage and birth defects, lacing everything from our gadgets to our toys to our beauty products. And unlike the European Union, the U.S. doesn’t require businesses to minimize them — or even to list them, so consumers can evaluate the risks. Schapiro argues that that policy isn’t just bad for public health: In an increasingly green economy, he says, American businesses stand to get shut out of a huge […]
STUDY: 17 War Vets Commit Suicide EVERY Day
Earlier this year, using the clout that only major broadcast networks seem capable of mustering, CBS News contacted the governments of all 50 states requesting their official records of death by suicide going back 12 years. They heard back from 45 of the 50. From the mountains of gathered information, they sifted out the suicides of those Americans who had served in the armed forces. What they discovered is that in 2005 alone — and remember, this is just in 45 states — there were at least 6,256 veteran suicides, 120 every week for a year and an average of […]
BREAKING: Trent Lott To Resign From Congress
THE POLITICO: The announcement took Capitol Hill by surprise because Lott, the former majority leader, seemed to be relishing his job as minority whip, the second-ranking GOP leadership job. He had regained a post in leadership after he resigned following racially insensitive remarks at a birthday party for the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.). A Lott friend said part of the reason, and a factor in the timing, is a new lobbying regulation, signed by President Bush in September, extending the existing lobbying ban for former members of Congress from one to two years. The lobbying ban takes effect at […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Geography of Hate
TIP OF THE ICEBERG: Northeastern detail, CLICK HERE to see full map. FROM the 1880s to the 1960s, at least 4,700 men and women were lynched in this country. The noose remains a terrifying symbol, and continues to be used by racists to intimidate African-Americans (who made up more than 70 percent of lynching victims). In the past decade or so, only about a dozen noose incidents a year came to the attention of civil rights groups. But since the huge Sept. 20 rally in Jena, La., where tens of thousands protested what they saw as racism in the prosecution […]
QUESTION THE PARKING AUTHORITY: GOP Got Paid
INQUIRER: Though the Philadelphia Parking Authority has fallen short in its promised funding for city schools, it certainly has been a boon for the Philadelphia Republican Party. Authority employees and consultants have contributed at least $214,000 to the Republican City Committee since 2001, according to an Inquirer analysis of campaign finance data. The contributions this year have reached at least $33,210, or more than 14 percent of the party’s total. Those figures don’t include money that those same employees and contractors have given to top Republican ward leaders, who happen to run the Parking Authority. MORE
KILLADELPHIA: 3 More Dead Since U Went To Bed
University of Pennsylvania police early Monday morning shot and killed a man accused of shooting a disc jockey at a strip club near the Penn campus, according to Philadelphia police. A campus police officer shot the alleged gunman after the DJ was shot inside Club Wizzards located below Chili’s restaurant at 38th and Chestnut Street, a homicide detective said. Campus police shot the alleged gunman in the chest at about 12:14 a.m. outside of Chili’s as he ran away. Authorities say University of Pennsylvania police were called to a report of a fight at the strip club. As police arrived […]
WE KNOW IT’S ONLY ROCK N’ ROLL BUT WE LIKE IT
GOD + WEEN + SATAN = THE ONENESS: Ween, Tower Theater, Last Night BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER They say actors are the ultimate existential heroes because they get to live multiple lives, while the rest of us have to settle for just one. Similarly, there is something heroic about Ween’s 23-year quest for the ultimate buzz, musical or otherwise, and their Zelig-like ability to utterly inhabit any genre they choose — shit-kicker country, dirtball metal, gold chain disco, hobbit-hole psychedelia, even fern-bar kool jazz — while simultaneously satirizing it for your protection. The new La Cucaracha, the 11th […]
MEDIA: When Is A Hamster Just A Hamster?
Last Monday, we called foul on PW’s Holiday Guide cover depicting vermin dressed up as an orthodox Jew. PAPERBOY EXTRA: Separated At Birth? Bad ideas have a way of making friends in low places, but shit like this shoulda never made it up the ladder. The image on the right is easy enough to find, just Google “rats” and “Jews”; the image on the left is the cover of this week’s PW. Frankly, we think it should have been the euthanized before it got beyond “Hey, what if we…” stage. Given the long and well-documented history of vicious anti-Semites — […]