Officials Ask Why Iraq Details Surface Now
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: April 6, 2005

Filed at 8:27 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) — The CIA and members of Congress said they want to know how a presidential commission unearthed details on intelligence failures about Iraq’s prewar weapons programs that previous investigations missed.

Of particular interest is information that emerged in last week’s report about how doubts were handled regarding a leading source on Saddam Hussein’s alleged mobile biological weapons labs — an Iraqi scientist who defected to Germany, code named “Curveball.”

Porter Goss, who became CIA director last September, has instructed officials to determine what happened and why the details did not come to light earlier, said his spokeswoman, Jennifer Millerwise.

“It was an unhappy surprise to the director that his first understanding of this issue was when he first read” the commission’s report, Millerwise said Wednesday.

Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., also acknowledged President Bush’s intelligence commission had details that did not emerge during his committee’s yearlong investigation into the Iraq assessments, released last July.

If Bush’s intelligence commission learned “something obvious,” Roberts said, “we want to make sure the intelligence community does fill in those gaps so we have a clear picture.”

Other lawmakers are angrier. “As far as I am concerned, the CIA threw us a curve ball,” said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., also a member of the Intelligence Committee.

The White House, Congress and U.S. intelligence agencies have launched a number of investigations into the faulty prewar intelligence on the Iraq threat. The most definitive to date came last week from Bush’s intelligence commission.

According to the report, CIA officials tried to tell the agency’s top officials that Curveball was a suspected fabricator and may have been mentally unstable. The new information includes an alleged warning in a late-night phone call to the agency’s former director, George Tenet.

Tenet and his top deputy have both released statements emphatically denying that they received such warnings. Tenet called it “deeply disturbing” that the information didn’t get to him.

Levin wants Tenet to testify under oath. “I don’t think the intelligence committee was given some of that detail on Curveball, but I think it should have been,” Levin said.

“Tenet said he doesn’t remember,” Levin said. “Hey, these are life and death decisions. This is what we tell the world. That’s not good enough. … Where is the responsibility?”

U.S. intelligence agencies and the Bush administration have come under fire since 2001 for not sharing enough information with lawmakers who oversee some of the government’s most sensitive intelligence activities. Some in Congress have been particularly concerned about U.S. detention policies and the botched Iraq intelligence that was used to justify the invasion.

When asked how the new investigation got more detail, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and a commission member, said that the panel conducted numerous long interviews. “We did not come up with that information early,” McCain said of the information on Curveball.

Last week’s report said the Defense Intelligence Agency circulated more than 100 reports from Curveball, with detailed information about mobile biological weapons labs in Iraq.

Curveball was working with German intelligence, and U.S. intelligence had limited access to him. The report said Curveball met once with a defense official and seemed to have a hangover.

The report said CIA officials contended that they tried to raise warnings about Curveball. One unnamed CIA division chief claims to have called Tenet at midnight the night before former Secretary of State Colin Powell gave his address to the United Nations, which provided the Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq. The division chief recalled telling Tenet that foreign intelligence officials were concerned about Curveball’s credibility.

In an unusual seven-page statement last week, Tenet said his “strong recollection” is that he did not speak with the division chief around midnight.

Tenet also said it was “stunning and deeply disturbing that this information, if true, was never brought forward to me by anyone” when the Iraq intelligence was scrutinized.

WAYNE KRAMER REPORT 3.22.05

From time to time I am blessed with what I call peak moments. These are times when the truth of a particular instant registers with me clearly. When there is no confusion or ambiguity whatsoever. When all distractions are stripped away and the moment merges with the feeling. They are the times when I know it just doesn’t get any better than it is right now.

Last month at London’s Royal Festival Hall I had one of those peak moments.

The music and socio/spiritual/educational/political philosophies of Sun Ra have been a pillar of my thinking for almost four decades. I first was introduced to them in the late sixties by my friend John Sinclair. I had moved out of my mother’s house on Detroit’s northwest side and into an apartment down in the Cass Corridor around Wayne State University. Sinclair and I had become friends and he became a mentor for me. He was older, better educated and possessed a worldview that intrigued me. Sinclair had a way of seeing things that made a lot more sense to me than what I was able to put together myself up to that point. We discussed everything from God to the blues and all points in-between. He was particularly well informed about music and musicians and the problems that go along with this kind of life. These were subjects that I was drawn to in an almost obsessive way.

We talked about what music means to people and what role it plays in our lives. We discussed how the music we gravitate to informs our lives and reflects them at the same time. I questioned what the connection between the musician and the listener is and how does it work beyond just the surface level. We talked a great deal and he turned me on to some music that changed everything for me. Some of this music was Sun Ra’s.

The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra on ESP Disc was the record that opened the door to a whole new life for me. It’s peculiar that sometimes folks tell me a piece of music I made changed their life. I find it hard to believe, but this is exactly what happened to me. Time and time again.

Sun Ra was just what I was looking for. I have always been drawn to the next thing. The current thing only holds my interest for a short while. No matter what it is, could be trains or cooking shows. I think I’m a little better at staying in one place and enjoying the moment today but I am still inexplicably drawn to moving ahead.

Sun Ra was–and still is–way ahead of me. He has been another mentor of mine. He was also way ahead of most of the leading edge musicians of the day. These were not slackers either. In the day of Monk, Mingus and Coltrane, saxophonist John Gilmore chose Sun Ra’s band as the most “stretched-out” of the lot. Gilmore had offers to join the others’ bands and chose the Arkestra. This tells me, in effect, that Sun Ra was able to advance the entire context of western music into a larger more resonate expression. Personally, I place him in the pantheon of most important artists with da Vinci, Bach, Mozart, Picasso or Pollack.

I took dozens of acid trips with Sun Ra’s music. I suppose one could say this undermines my credibility, but I don’t care. I got deep, deep into what he and his fellows were doing. I heard what it was he was telling me. Us. That music can be limitless, that its expression is only limited by our own limited human thoughts and if we can get beyond self, then we can find a land “Where the sun shines eternally.” That the message is to make it your message.

Sun Ra died in May of 1993 and a few of the center core players like the aforementioned tenor giant Gilmore and baritone saxophonist Pat Patrick, vocalist and dancer June Tyson have also died, but the band has carried on bravely under the able leadership of alto saxophonist Marshall Allen. Who, at 70, is blowing like a teenager from Mars, which I suspect he actually is.

When we first started DKT-MC5 it was with the understanding that the band was an experiment and would have to be considered a “work-in-progress” concept. Any old ideas of what our band was or how our band might operate would have to be jettisoned in favor of a more flexible and adventurous platform to work on‚Ķif it was going to work at all. I actually wasn’t sure it could. It had been a long time since I played with Dennis Thompson and Michael Davis and a lot of water had passed under those bridges.

After the pleasant discovery that we could not only improve our ability to play together and even tour together quite successfully, I reached the conclusion: So what? Why are we doing this? To carry the message of the music of the MC5 to a new generation of fans? Sure, but the answer is ultimately bigger than that. It’s because we need to continue to do something creative. Doing things that push the boundaries of what a band is, and what the art of performing music might become given a little encouragement, DKT/MC5 is just that kind of vehicle.

The concert at Royal Festival Hall was the realization of just such a plan. It doesn’t come without a great deal of work by a lot of people. Once the idea had been hatched we were able to tie together some unfulfilled commitments from last summer’s 66-city world tour.

I assembled a new line-up of the band featuring our old friend Handsome Dick Manitoba, guitar hero Gilby Clarke and the incomparable Lisa Kekaula. We set up a short European tour to bracket the event. We had five shows across Spain and France to get ourselves together for the London concert. Being in a band is not a destination, it’s a process. The process takes a few runs-through to tune itself up for the performances. Five was a good number and by the time we hit London everyone felt pretty secure in their roles.

We were joined in London by my friend David Thomas. David and I put in some extra time in the dressing room working out the timing on the countdown section of “Starship.” It is a complicated bit of vocalizing, and it took some effort to master.

The sound checks went down fine and we were all running around from task to task like chickens with their heads cut off. There was a considerable press commitment for the day and I kept up my end by sitting for two filmings and a handful of print interviews. One film, incidentally, is a new documentary film by Don Letts on Sun Ra.

The Arkestra’s performance was a joy to my ears. The wonderful cacophony of multiple horns, bass, drums and electric guitar were fresh and sparkling. The Arkesta looked great too. The Sun Ra Arkestra doesn’t often get credit for their contribution to the art of performance in dance and theater, which is considerable. I’m not sure who influenced whom, but back in the 60s when we were first playing with them in Detroit they wore afro/dashiki types of clothes. We had just begun to experiment with sequins and gold lame and other metallic types of materials, so I am going out on a limb here to say that Sun Ra saw these bright flashy clothes on these crazy boys in Detroit and incorporated them into his presentation. Did we get it from him? Did he get it from us? Doesn’t matter. We all got it and tonight the Arkestra was shimmering and shining forth beautifully. The stage lighting really helped amplify the bright reds and blues of the sequins and bangles. The dancing was superb. Free and joyous.

We took the stage at our appointed time and played a focused set of straight down the center rock material from the MC5 book. We were closing in on the moment. As it approached, I started to feel a real excitement about what we were about to get into. All through the planning stages I kept calm and only allowed myself to be excited in an intellectual sense, as in, this a good idea among many other good ideas. But now it was real. It was palatable. I could feel it. I was giddy.

I said a few words to the audience about what Sun Ra meant to me and the band. I introduced Marshall Allen and the fellows. I introduced David Thomas and Dr. Charles Moore and we began playing “Starship.” I had a simple outline for the performance which was to start easy and free. Start small and build gradually into the actual song portion of the performance and then let’s just see what happens. What happened exceeded my wildest expectations. Each little sound I made with my guitar in the intro, someone in the Arkestra answered. I got a great exchange going with trumpeter Michael Ray.

When Dennis would lay down a rhythmic feel on drums, everybody joined in with him. The music was totally free and totally controlled at the same time. This is the lesson of freedom, its not free. For each freedom there is a responsibility, in music and in everything else. We explored theme after theme in a glorious and joyous fashion. I only wish we could have stayed with one rhythmic feel longer to see what’s over the next hill. Across the next valley. Over in the next galaxy.

I realized that, because of the stage volume, David Thomas couldn’t discern the timing on the opening chords, so I jumped in to sing the opening lines with him. “Starship‚ĶStarship take me‚Ķ” All Aboard.

The Arkestra joined in with a spontaneous counterpoint to the rock chord changes and we rounded the corner to the countdown section. The thing that makes this part so difficult is that it is absolutely set and cannot be changed. It comes at an accelerated velocity and has a lot of rhythmical words to get out at a really fast clip.

“Ten. For the gravity. Checkpoint! Nine for polarity. Checkpoint! ‚Ķ”

Made it! We’re leaving the power of earth’s gravitational pull and heading into zero G.

“Out there amongst the planets‚Ķ”

Here the Arkestra were in familiar territory. After all, space is their place. We cruised the galaxies and generally enjoyed the view for a while.

Earlier I had discussed with Marshall the possibilities of us all singing, “We travel the spaceways‚Ķ” or, “If you find Earth boring, it’s the same old same thing, come on sign up with Outerspaceways Incorporated” together, and he was all for it.

We all sang together and I never felt so at home as I did in that moment. I have been singing variations of this tune for 30 years and right there in that moment it just all seemed to fit perfectly. Right there in that instant, it was all there. From way back then with John Sinclair in the kitchen of his apartment on Warren Ave. in Detroit to right now here in London England, in an instant, time was suspended. The peak moment.

We all danced outrageous party dances from space ballet to the funky chicken. It was a full body/spirit/mind celebration. Just then, David Thomas began his Tuvian cum Venusian throat singing. We soared and roared and clicked and clacked, binked and bonked our way through the night finally ending in a drone of feedback that segued into a funky New Orleans second line march from the stage for all the voyagers. Naturally, these moments do not last.

You can’t hold on to joy. You just grab a kiss as it passes by.

I‚Äôm pretty sure the crowd went nuts but I was overwhelmed myself at the fun we just had. It wasn’t the music or the lights or the crowd, it was the experience of being alive. The backstage scene was pandemonium with good friends old and new showing up to check in.

Blissful, we left London at four in the morning en route to Italy and the remainder of the tour.

Oh yea, we filmed and recorded it too. Can’t wait to see what we got along with the hundreds of hours of footage from last year’s tour. Who knows? More will be revealed.

But the best news is we will do it again soon.

“We came from nowhere here. Why can‚Äôt we go somewhere there?” — Sun Ra

I couldn’t agree more.

Best, w

COURTESY JOSHUA BABCOCK!

‘Maybe I’ll be a feminist in my old age’

She quit London for New York after being hounded by the press. Five years later, Bjork has a new relationship and a new baby. But, she confesses, she’s still homesick for the British sense of humour

Liz Hoggard
Sunday March 13, 2005
The Observer

It’s impossible to be neutral about Bjork. Her critics certainly have plenty of ammunition. She eats roast puffin. She has a bonkers fashion sense and speaks in a mix of Nordic and Mockney. Spitting Image made a puppet of her. She had a very public fight at Bangkok airport with a photographer who got too close to her son (images of Bj??rk banging the woman’s head on the floor went round the world). Director Lars Von Trier even claimed she tried to eat her dress during filming of Dancer in the Dark .

But for many people, her arrival on the late-Eighties British music scene (as part of the Icelandic punk band, the Sugarcubes; then as a solo artist) was a breath of fresh air. We’d not seen such an exotic, counterculture figure – one who wore plaits for heaven’s sake – since the days of Lene Lovich. Broadly speaking, women in rock are ‘babes’ or ‘troubled’, but the image of Bj??rk sprinting down the street in Spike Jonze’s 1995 video, It’s So Quiet (performing dance steps from a 1940s MGM musical) made it clear she has no time for sexual stereotypes. Neither model-thin, nor conventionally gorgeous, her stage charm rests on her sheer vitality.

Her only ‘weak’ spot seemed to be her relationships with men. Her marriage to Sugarcubes bassist Thor Eldon ended when their son was only a baby (she was a single mother at 22). There were broken engagements to bad boys, Goldie and Tricky, but no one seemed to match her intellectually. Then, four years ago, she met the American multi-media artist Matthew Barney (best known for his surreal Cremaster Cycle of films). Today, they live in Noel Coward’s old house across the Hudson from Manhattan, with their baby daughter, Isadora. It seems a marriage of true eccentrics. Barney is a master provocateur (in 2003, he filled New York’s Guggenheim with tapioca, petroleum jelly and beeswax) and he has worked as an athlete, model and medic – so one senses conversation is never dull.

The couple guard their privacy fiercely, but for the first time they are working together. Bj??rk is writing a soundtrack for Barney’s new film, Drawing Restraint 9, to be premiered in June in Japan. ‘It’s really liberating to do a project that’s not just about me,’ she enthuses. ‘I mean I love being a very personal singer-songwriter, but I also like being a scientist or explorer.’

When I arrive for the interview, she is sprawled on the sofa, shoes off, eating tuna salad (no puffin today). She has flown in unexpectedly to talk about two new projects close to her heart. First she is releasing a DVD of videos filmed for her latest album, Medulla, widely regarded as a return to form. It’s full of images of Bj??rk dressed in a 50kg Alexander McQueen dress covered in tiny bells, and also as a hay bale (don’t ask). Best of all is a spoof documentary following the making of Jonze’s video for her single, Triumph of a Heart, an everyday tale of a woman and her commitment-phobic lover (played by a tabby cat called Nietzsche). The action winds up in a mad Icelandic bar with Bj??rk’s artist friends downing vodka and yodelling. It’s the equivalent of a pub crawl with Bj??rk.

Of course she was working with Jonze and Michel Gondry long before they became Hollywood stars. We talk about the success of Gondry’s film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. ‘Michel did a great work there. He gave Kate [Winslet] who’s obviously such a huge spirit, such a vivacious lady, so much space. Usually when you see females in movies, they feel like they have these metallic structures around them, they are caged in by male energy. But she could be at her full volume without restrictions.’ A contrast, one senses with von Trier, who loves brutalising his actresses.

A true fashion radical, Bj??rk champions designers like Rei Kawakubo and Sophia Kokosalaki (who made the ‘curtain’ she wore to the 2004 Olympics). She would never wear jeans and a T-shirt, she says, because they are ‘a symbol of white American imperialism, like drinking Coca-Cola’. Her most famous fashion faux pas was wearing a swan outfit to the 2000 Oscars (she claims it was a conceptual joke). Does she ever tire of being eccentric? ‘It’s like music. So long as it’s a form of self-expression, I’m quite into it, but not when it becomes about power status. I do try and wear stuff by unknown designers, and I make sure I pay because if nothing else I have money.’

Today she is wearing a vintage yellow garment that is very nearly a dress, accessorised with an orange tracksuit top, silver shoes and gold handbag. A dusting of blue eyeshadow highlights her feathery eyebrows and wonderful flat cheekbones. She looks lovely. But she is also endearingly fidgety: scratching like a small child, twisting in her chair and trying to keep her dress this side of modest.

And yet one senses a new seriousness. Bj??rk’s other project is a charity album, with all proceeds going to Unicef. It is a collection of cover versions and mixes of her 1995 song, Army of Me (the most covered Bj??rk track ever). She posted a message on her website giving fans a week to submit tracks, then whittled 600 down to 20. With its defiant lyrics (‘And if you complain once more, you’ll meet an army of me’), the song is classic Bj??rk: brutal yet tender. And it has inspired an extraordinary mix of interpretations – from Canadian extreme metal to country.

She says it humbled her: ‘I was on the 12th floor in Manhattan listening to all the versions, and I could see into all these windows. I suddenly realised that in all the bedrooms all around the world, there are people so busy doing so many things. After that, I stopped walking past houses thinking, “Oh this is just a place where people are couch potatoes and lead mundane lives”.’

She’d been planning the charity album for several years, but the devastation of the tsunami in South East Asia proved the catalyst. Why does she think we responded so strongly when other humanitarian disasters are ignored? ‘I think because it happened just a month after the Bush election, it made people think they really had a say in rebuilding things, that they could make a difference. For the first time since the Vietnam War there seems a universal feeling among common people that they don’t agree with the people who are ruling the world.’

A self-confessed ‘punk anarchist’, she found herself politicised by the Iraq war. ‘People like me who don’t follow the news that much, suddenly I was looking online every day, just to see what was going on. I don’t know about you, but whatever I was doing, having dinner with music people or plumbers (a lot of my family are electricians and carpenters), everyone was talking about the war and how they disagreed with it – or agreed with it, but everyone had a position. So although it has been destructive and disastrous, the good thing is that people actually want to have a say.

‘A lot of the time I get obsessed by little nerdy things in my corner that no one else is interested in. I have that nerd factor in my character. So for once I was interested in something everyone else was interested in. I’m not going to talk like I know about politics, because I’m a total amateur, but maybe I can be a spokesperson for people who aren’t normally interested in politics.’

Her last album Medulla was certainly her most political – but in a unique way. She came up with an a capella album featuring only human voices: yodelling, beatbox, Icelandic choral music. It was, she says, a way to counter ‘stupid American racism and patriotism’ after 9/11. ‘I was saying, “What about the human soul? What happened before we got involved in problematic things like civilisation and religion and nationhood?”‘

The other major influence on Medulla (Latin for ‘marrow’) was Bj??rk’s pregnancy with Isadora: the album is full of touching, visceral songs about birth. ‘I became really aware of my muscles and bones. Your body just takes over and does incredible things.’ Now 39, Bj??rk is an example of a modern gap mother, with a three-year-old daughter and an 18-year-old son (Sindri now lives with his father in Reykjavik, where Bj??rk also spends part of the year).

‘It’s interesting for me to bring up a girl. You go to the toy store and the female characters there – Cinderella, the lady in Beauty and the Beast – their major task is to find Prince Charming. And I’m like, wait a minute – it’s 2005! We’ve fought so hard to have a say, and not just live through our partners, and yet you’re still seeing two-year-old girls with this message pushed at them that the only important thing is to find this amazing dress so that the guy will want you. It’s something my mum pointed out to me when I was little – so much that I almost threw up – but she’s right.’

She’s open about the problems of balancing family and work. ‘It’s incredible how nature sets females up to take care of people, and yet it is tricky for them to take care of themselves.’ Slightly to her astonishment she is becoming interested in women’s rights. Because of her mother’s own militancy – ‘she wouldn’t enter the kitchen, I mean come on’ – she reacted the other way, adoring housework, knitting and sewing.

But recently, ‘I have been noticing how much harder it is for me and my girlfriends to juggle things than it is for men. In the 1990s, there was a lot of optimism: we thought we’d finally sorted out equal rights for men and women … and then suddenly it just crashed. I think this is my first time in all the hundreds of interviews I’ve done, that I’ve actually jumped on the feminist bandwagon. In the past I always wanted to change the subject. But I think now it’s time to bring up all these issues. I wish it wasn’t, but I’ll do it, I’m up for doing the dirty work!’

Will it inspire new songs? ‘It’s definitely brewing inside me. Maybe if Medulla was my personal, idiosyncratic statement about politics, whatever I do next is going to be my eccentric view of feminism. It’s like any major upheaval, whether it’s the revolution in France or punk for me in the 1970s, you break up all the corruption and fuck up all the bad things, so you can start really fresh. But it’s the law of nature that it all settles again, so you have to keep checking yourself. You can’t ever say, “OK, we sorted out corruption and everyone is equal.” So I might become a feminist in my old age!’

Born Bj??rk Gudmundsdottir in Reykjavik in 1965, she grew up in a hippy commune with her mother and stepfather, a blues musician. ‘I was brought up feeling that my mother had sacrificed herself for me. Fortunately she’s now got a little business doing homeopathy from home, but she’s almost 60. I’m still desperate to get over that sense of guilt. I don’t want my baby to feel that.’

An infant prodigy, she released her first album aged 11 and was touring the world by 18, when the Sugarcubes’ first single Birthday went global. She spent years living in London, but decamped to New York in 2000, driven out by British tabloids and a terrible incident where a 21-year-old ‘fan’ videotaped his own suicide after mailing an acid bomb to her record company.

Like fellow emigr?© David Bowie, she prefers the anonymity of New York, ‘where they only have one tabloid, not four all competing against each other’. She says that she resolutely avoids celebrity parties but one day might like to run a music school for children. ‘Part of me is probably more conservative than people realise. I like my old string quartets, I don’t like music that’s trippy for trippy’s sake.’ I say she seems slightly wistful about being back in London. Does she miss us? ‘I love England. It’s no coincidence it’s the first place I moved to for a more cosmopolitan life, which is the only thing Iceland lacks. You can be a very critical, unforgiving people, you knock people down when you should be cheering. But criticism can be good. And this is a country that loves comedy. I saw a poll this week of top BBC moments, and the first five were all from comedies like The Office and Monty Python. You are very good at skimming corruption off the top and revealing the integrity inside. In Britain things have to be pure,’ she grins, ‘You just don’t get away with bullshitting.’

¬? Medulla: DVD and Army of Me are released in May on One Little Indian Records.

from somewhere:

Ghostface Killah’s next album may as well be titled Ghostface Meets Metal Face, as he’s teaming up with iron-mask-loving hip-hop veteran MF Doom.

“I’m into old hip-hop, and the music that he makes is right up my alley,” Ghostface said. “His beats are real underground. He’s got the sound RZA had back in the day.”

The Wu-Tang rapper and the former KMD member have collaborated on six songs thus far, and while the project will probably be released on Doom’s indie label, Nature Sounds, his manager claims Def Jam is also interested.

Meanwhile, Ghost is digging up tracks for his next solo album, tentatively titled Rapper’s Delight, and Doom may have some tracks on that project as well. “I’m working my album around his beats and whatever I add from other producers,” Ghost said. “I would love to do a whole thing with him. He’s a cool guy.”

And while some Wu fans might’ve been disappointed that Raekwon wasn’t on last year’s The Pretty Toney Album, Ghost promised the Chef would be featured on at least four or five songs on the new disc.

“Fans are always asking why you didn’t do this or that, but they have to understand that people are working and busy themselves,” Ghostface said.

Schedules aside, the two are also in the early stages of piecing together a second duet album, following up Only Built 4 Cuban Linx.

“We sort of Batman’d and Robin’d that first album,” Ghost recalled. “I told him to send me some beats that he wants to use so I could catch some lines on it when I could. I’m really trying to focus on my thing, but I like to focus on two things at the same time.”

A lot has changed since their 1995 album, Ghostface said, especially the state of hip-hop. Referring to 50 Cent and the Game’s highly publicized saga earlier this month, he declared, “The game is like wrestling right now. … I don’t see any originality in it no more. Everything is a gimmick. It’s not based upon good music. It’s just based on hype now. You have to shoot somebody in order to sell some records. I put out good albums, but my albums never really sold nothing.”

He’s hoping Jay-Z can reverse that trend, now that Jay’s got a corner office at Def Jam.

“Jay knows I’m fresh, and [about] the work I’ve been putting in on the streets. It’s great for somebody to understand me,” Ghost said. “I’m glad that Hov is the president because I’d rather talk to him than anyone that’s over 50 years old. I just wanna get my talent out to the world within these next two or three years. And maybe two albums after that I might call it a wrap.

“My goal was just to do 10 albums. But if God spares my life and gives me the frame of mind, then I’m gonna keep going until he tells me to stop,” Ghost continued. “I’m going to go straight into film. I’ve been writing movies. I want to produce and direct if I could and just get my movie career up, ’cause I think I could get real busy on the acting tip. If they caught me in Hollywood, it’s gonna be some sh–. I want to do a little real estate and help poor people. I want to be that dude on the TV like, ‘For five cents a day you could feed this kid right here.’ That’s what I want to do. It’s payback for what God gave me.”

MF Doom’s manager said he expects Ghostface and MF Doom’s album to drop this fall. Ghost said his solo album and his reunion with Raekwon will likely drop later this year as well.

COURTESY JOSHUA BABCOCK!.

EMMA PEEL: Hampstead Penthouse

Up until late 1966 Emma lived in a sleek, modern penthouse atop a high-rise in Hampstead, guarded by the “cyclops,” which Steed eyes warily (top).

Perhaps the most unusual aspect of this unique dwelling is that there are no right angles, and the only conventional door is the main entrance, far left; all the rest are sliding doors. The kitchen entrance is to the right of the high-tech entertainment center/bar behind the right-side sofa–on which, you’ll note, are Steed’s bowler and brolly. The living area, enlarged below, features a free-standing fireplace surrounded by a wrap-around sofa, and sliding doors leading to the bathroom, darkroom and storage.

From within the kitchen, if the kitchen door was enlarged, one would see the panorama above, which reveals the area directly behind the fireplace. To the far left in this image is the bedroom door, through which the bed is visible. To the right of the bedroom is access to the balcony, which wraps around the living room.

The compact, modern kitchen with its built-in appliances is shown in the detail view, above left. Seems either Emma just had a party, or she is not particularly diligent about washing her dishes.

Next are two exterior views of the building; note the name visible in the second. The actual location is Highpoint 2 in Highgate. Tony McKay reports that the statues by the entrance are a result of the architect being told that Highpoint 1 was too “modern.”

The architect was Tecton, a distinguished firm of British architects, established by Bernhold Lubetkin. Denys Lasdun was at one time a partner. They designed the Penguin Pool and Gorilla House at London Zoo; two blocks at Highpoint and North Hill flats at Highgate; Finsbury Health Centre; and flats in Roseberry Avenue.

COURTESY RICHARD PLEUGER!

COURTESY ROZ PAYNE!

Jodorowsky’s two most famous films, the original ‘midnight movies’ on DVD, fully uncut and presented in their correct screen ratios, along with an informative book makes this the essential cult movie boxset release.

El Topo is Jodorowsky’s unique spiritual western, which takes on the ritual violence of Sam Peckinpah and the grotesque humour of Sergio Leone to roughly sketch an apology on the oppression and arrogance of power. This film is a journey through tragedy and anarchy, myth and revolution, paganism and holy scripture, classicism and surrealism, artistic performance and cinematic action. El Topo remains an essential, raw work of instinctive, visceral power created by one of the most visionary filmmakers in cinematic history.

The Holy Mountain (aka La Montagna Sacra), Jodorowsky’s tantric masterpiece is presented here on DVD, in undoubtedly the best condition ever on any home video format, thankfully at last losing the cursed ‘fogging’ that ruined the old Japanese home video editions. Cinema for Jodorowsky is none other than great magic, an elaborate alchemical process. The Holy Mountain is probably the film that best represents the idea of art as an inner quest, a journey of initiation but also artifice and boundless illusion. In the cinema, surrealism has perhaps never achieved such expressive, almost explosive, power as in the work of this remarkable filmmaker who knows Holy Scripture like the back of his hand. Poised between erotic delirium and political satire; the cabala and cartoons; catastrophism and salvation; Catholicism and heresy; horror and cinema verite; violence and spirituality; performance and narration, The Holy Mountain is utterly essential for anyone who claims to love cinema.

El Topo Special features:
Academy ratio
Spanish language soundtrack in Dolby Digital 2.0
Optional subtitles in English or Italian
Interview with Jodorowsky expert Massimo Monteleone

The Holy Mountain Special features:
2.35:1 widescreen
English or Italian language soundtracks in Dolby Digital 2.0
Interview with Jodorowsky expert Massimo Monteleone

COURTESY JOHN COULTHART!

A Con Job by Pakistan’s Pal, George Bush
Robert Scheer
March 29, 2005 Los Angeles Times

Trying to follow the U.S. policy on the proliferation of nuclear weapons is like watching a three-card monte game on a city street corner. Except the stakes are higher.

The announcement Friday that the United States is authorizing the sale to Pakistan of F-16 fighter jets capable of delivering nuclear warheads ‚Äî and thereby escalating the region’s nuclear arms race ‚Äî is the latest example of how the most important issue on the planet is being bungled by the Bush administration.

Consider this dizzying series of Bush II-era actions:

We have thrown away thousands of Iraqi and American lives and billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars after crying wolf on Iraq’s long-defunct nuclear weapons program and now expect the world to believe similar scary stories about neighboring Iran.

We have cozied up to Pakistan for more than three years as it freely allowed the operation of the most extravagantly irresponsible nuclear arms bazaar the world has ever seen.

We sabotaged negotiations with North Korea by telling allies that Pyongyang had supplied nuclear material to Libya, even though the Bush administration knew that the country of origin of those shipments was our “ally,” Pakistan.

Now, Lockheed Martin has been saved from closing its F-16 production line by the White House decision to lift the arms embargo on Pakistan and allow the sale. The decision, which ends a 1990 embargo put in place by the president’s father in reprisal for Pakistan’s development of a nuclear arsenal, is especially odd at a time when we are berating European nations for considering lifting their arms embargo on China.

The White House says the F-16s are a reward to Islamabad for its help in disrupting terrorism networks, despite a decade of Pakistan’s strong support of Al Qaeda and the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

Yet Pakistan’s ruling generals could be excused for believing that Washington is not seriously concerned about the proliferation of nuclear weapons. How else to explain invading a country ‚Äî Iraq ‚Äî that didn’t possess nukes, didn’t sell nuclear technology to unstable nations and didn’t maintain an unholy alliance with Al Qaeda ‚Äî and then turning around and giving the plum prizes of U.S. military ingenuity to the country that did?

Even as the Bush administration continues to confront Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons program, Islamabad has admitted that Pakistani nuclear weapons trafficker Abdul Qadeer Khan ‚Äî the father of his nation’s nuclear bomb ‚Äî provided Iran with the centrifuges essential to such a program. Further, new evidence reveals that Khan marketed to Iran and Libya not only the materials needed for a nuclear bomb but the engineering competence to actually make one.

Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf insists Khan was running his nuclear smuggling operation under the radar of the military government that brought Musharraf to power. And although this is a highly implausible claim given the reach of the military’s power and the scope of the operation, the White House has found it convenient to buy it hook, line and sinker ‚Äî all the better to remarket Pakistan to the American people as a war-on-terrorism ally.

While Pakistan was receiving such heaping helpings of benefit of the doubt, North Korea became the Bush administration’s scapegoat for the rapid nuclear proliferation happening on its watch, according to the Washington Post. “In an effort to increase pressure on North Korea, the Bush administration told its Asian allies in briefings earlier this year that Pyongyang had exported nuclear material to Libya,” wrote the Post. “But that is not what U.S. intelligence reported, according to two officials with detailed knowledge of the transaction.” Sources told the paper that “Pakistan’s role as both the buyer and the seller [of uranium hexafluoride] was concealed to cover up the part played by Washington’s partner.”

One result of the United States shortsightedly pulling this fast one has been the collapse of multilateral nonproliferation talks with Pyongyang. Yet in the long term, the cost is much greater: a dramatic erosion of trust in U.S. statements on nuclear proliferation.

From Iraq to Iran, North Korea to Pakistan, the Bush administration has pulled so many con jobs that it is difficult for anybody to take it seriously. Unfortunately, though, the proliferation of nuclear weapons is as serious as it gets.

Avant Gardening: Ecological Struggle in the City & the World
by Peter Lamborn Wilson (Editor), Bill Weinberg (Editor)

“They” are buying and patenting the DNA of every lifeform. They will design your baby, and they will design the E-Coli in its colon. They will make the word “organic” mean what they want it to mean. They will use 100 times more energy than you because they know better. We can take our ‘community gardens” and move somewhere else if we don’t like progress. Yeah, go somewhere where the sun of Global Capital don’t shine. And stay there. Okay, Then. This book is headed in that direction. Want to tag along? Edited by Peter Lamborn Wilson and Bill Weinberg, with texts by Miekal And, Bernadette Cozart, Jack Collom, Sarah Ferguson, Joe Hollis, Lyx Ish, Bernadette Mayer, Carmelo Ruiz, Bill Weinberg, Peter Lamborn Wilson, and John Wright. A collection of passionate and polemical essays against the invasive development of the Lower East Side of Manhattan and elsewhere. Focused especially on the destruction of individual and community gardens, AVANT GARDENING also chronicles the triumphs and defeats of eco-resistence.

This collection of writings, assembled at a time of crisis for NYC community gardens, imagines the radical possibilities of urban gardening. Bringing together NYC history, political analysis, utopian schemes, poetic accounts of what gardening can create, and investigations into the dynamics of sustainability, community, high and low technologies, and power, this book challenges the “Supermarket to the World” ideologies of global capital. Includes work by Sarah Ferguson, Jack Collom, Carmelo Ruiz, the editors, and others.

From last week’s New York Times:

Need Talent to Exhibit in Museums? Not This Prankster
By RANDY KENNEDY

It was not nearly as dangerous as the time he sneaked into the elephant pen at the London Zoo and scrawled a graffiti message from the point of view of an elephant: “I want out. This place is too cold. Keeper smells. Boring, boring, boring.”

And it was not quite as elaborate as the stunt last year in which he spirited a stuffed rat wearing wraparound sunglasses into the Natural History Museum in London and mounted it on a wall.

But over the last two weeks, a shadowy British graffiti artist who calls himself Banksy has carried his own humorous artworks into four New York institutions – the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum and the American Museum of Natural History – and attached them with some sort of adhesive to the walls, alongside other paintings and exhibits. Similar stunts at the Louvre and the Tate museum have earned the artist – who will not reveal his real name – a following in Europe, where he has had successful gallery shows and sold thousands of books of his artwork. But his graffiti has also landed him in legal trouble.

Elyse Topalian, a spokeswoman for the Met, said that museum officials believed that a painting found there – a small, gold-framed portrait of a woman wearing a gas mask – was hung surreptitiously on March 13. Guards noticed it and removed it from a wall near other paintings in the American wing, she said. Ms. Topalian added that no damage had been done to the wall or to other artworks.

The museum does not look kindly on such unauthorized additions to its walls. “I think it’s fair to say that it would take more than a piece of Scotch tape to get a work of art into the Met,” Ms. Topalian said.

Sally Williams, a spokeswoman for the Brooklyn Museum, said a painting – in this case, of a red-coated colonial-era military officer holding a spray-paint can, with antiwar graffiti in the background – was discovered and removed on March 16. The painting was hung between two others from the museum’s permanent collection in the American Identities galleries on the fifth floor. She said that the painting was now sitting in the museum’s conservation lab and that its fate was uncertain.

“I think the immediate issue was just to get it out of the gallery and tucked away somewhere where it couldn’t be seen,” she said.

An official at the Museum of Modern Art said that a painting of a can of cream-of-tomato soup was found hanging in a third-floor elevator lobby and taken down on March 17. A spokesman for the Museum of Natural History, where the graffiti artist apparently hung a glass-encased beetle (a real one) equipped with fighter jet wings, missiles and a satellite dish, confirmed the incident by e-mail but did not say when the work was found.

Asked whether the incidents raised security concerns for them, officials at the institutions said no, adding that they believed that they had sufficient numbers of guards and other monitoring systems.

Pictures of the illicit art installations, apparently taken by an accomplice of Banksy, were posted yesterday at woostercollective.com, a site that has become a repository of pictures of graffiti and other street and urban art. Some of the pictures show a bearded man in an overcoat and hat, looking a little like Inspector Jacques Clouseau, hanging his paintings in the museums.

Marc Schiller, a founder of the Web site, said the pictures were sent to him yesterday along with a statement from the artist that said: “This historic occasion has less to do with finally being embraced by the fine-art establishment and is more about the judicious use of a fake beard and some high-strength glue.”

Mr. Schiller said the artist had returned to London and would not consent to a telephone interview. But in an e-mail exchange yesterday afternoon, conducted with Mr. Schiller’s help, Banksy – who prefers to be called not an artist, but a “quality vandal” – said he decided to invade those four New York museums for a simple reason.

“I’ve wandered round a lot of art galleries thinking, ‘I could have done that,’ so it seemed only right that I should try,” he wrote. “These galleries are just trophy cabinets for a handful of millionaires. The public never has any real say in what art they see.”

He said he had entered all of the museums during normal visitors’ hours. Asked how he was able to hang his works without being noticed by museum guards or security cameras, Banksy responded rather opaquely. “You just have to glue on a fake beard and move with the times,” he said.

He added that he had thought about storming the Guggenheim, but was too intimidated. “I would have had to appear between two Picassos,” he wrote. “And I’m not good enough to get away with that.”