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Late in the afternoon of Jan. 16, a SWAT team from the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, backed up by officers from the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office and the local police department, along with a few drug-sniffing dogs, burst into a unmarked recording studio on a short, quiet street in an industrial neighborhood near the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. The officers entered with their guns drawn; the local police chief said later that they were “prepared for the worst.�? They had come to serve a warrant for the arrest of the studio’s owners on the grounds that they had violated the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law, or RICO, a charge often used to lock up people who make a business of selling drugs or breaking people’s arms to extort money. The officers confiscated recording equipment, cars, computers and bank statements along with more than 25,000 music CDs. Two of the three owners of the studio, Tyree Simmons, who is 28, and Donald Cannon, who is 27, were arrested and held overnight in the Fulton County jail. Eight employees, mostly interns from local colleges, were briefly detained as well.

Later that night, a reporter for the local Fox TV station, Stacey Elgin, delivered a report on the raid from the darkened street in front of the studio. She announced that the owners of the studio, known professionally as DJ Drama and DJ Don Cannon, were arrested for making “illegal CDs.�? The report cut to an interview with Matthew Kilgo, an official with the Recording Industry Association of America, who was involved in the raid. The R.I.A.A., a trade and lobbying group that represents the major American record labels, works closely with the Department of Justice and local police departments to crack down on illegal downloading and music piracy, which most record-company executives see as a dire threat to their business.

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If anyone involved with the raid knew that the men they had arrested were two of the most famous D.J.’s in the country, they didn’t let on while the cameras were rolling. For local law enforcement, the raid on Drama and Cannon’s studio was no different from a raid they executed in October on an Atlanta factory where a team of illegal immigrants was found making thousands of copies of popular DVDs and CDs to sell on the street. Along with the bootlegged CDs, the police found weapons and a stash of drugs in the factory. (The Fox report on the DJ Drama raid included a shot of a grave-looking police officer saying, “In this case we didn’t find drugs or weapons, but it’s not uncommon for us to find other contraband.�?)

But Drama and Cannon’s studio was not a bootlegging plant; it was a place where successful new hip-hop CDs were regularly produced and distributed. Drama and Cannon are part of a well-regarded D.J. collective called the Aphilliates. Although their business almost certainly violated federal copyright law, as well as a Georgia state law that requires CDs to be labeled with the name and address of the producers, they were not simply stealing from the major labels; they were part of an alternative distribution system that the mainstream record industry uses to promote and market hip-hop artists. Drama and Cannon have in recent years been paid by the same companies that paid Kilgo to help arrest them.

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Mixtape D.J.’s have effectively absorbed many of the functions of an A&R department, the branch of a record label that traditionally discovers and develops new talent. Ron Stewart, a promotions coordinator at Jive Records, a subsidiary of Sony BMG Music, told me he prefers to test new artists out on mixtapes. “Budget permitting,�? he said, “we’d do a few mixtapes with a few D.J.’s, because they have different audiences in different regions.�? Labels prefer to use established mixtape D.J.’s like Drama, rather than produce promotional CDs themselves, Stewart said, because “the best D.J.’s have a better brand than the average label does.�?

Although the deals are informal and often secret, labels typically pay a prominent D.J. like Drama $10,000 to $15,000 to produce a mixtape for an artist. The label’s representatives, Stewart explained, adopt what amounts to a don’t ask, don’t tell policy about the D.J.’s plans to sell the work; what the D.J. does with his copy of the master, Stewart said, “is his own business.�?

You simply can’t trust the record companies – you should not do any business with them, either as an artist or as a consumer.

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An Italian judge has ordered that 31 people stand trial over the kidnapping of an Islamic cleric as part of the US policy of extraordinary rendition.

Virtually all of the 26 American suspects are thought to be present or former CIA agents, while the other five defendants are Italian nationals.

Prosecutors allege that Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr was abducted in Milan on February 17th 2003 and flown to Germany and then his native Egypt to be questioned over suspected terrorist involvement.

Critics say Mr Nasr, only recently released, was taken to Africa in order to be tortured.

The previously secret US practice of extraordinary rendition, employed at the height of the war on terror, saw terror suspects taken to countries with more relaxed laws on interrogation and torture.

Italian prime minister Romano Prodi has not yet decided whether to ask for the 26 American defendants to be extradited – a request almost certainly to be turned down – but under Italian law the trial can go ahead regardless.

Prodi, please do ask. And all European countries take note: if the USA turns it down, stop all extradition of your own citizens to the USA.

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A media exhibit featuring a campaign for a fake drug to treat a fictitious illness is causing a stir because some people think the illness is real.

Australian artist Justine Cooper created the marketing campaign for a non-existent drug called Havidol for Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder (DSACDAD), which she also invented.

But the multi-media exhibit at the Daneyal Mahmood Gallery in New York, which includes a website, mock television and print advertisements and billboards is so convincing people think it is authentic.

“People have walked into the gallery and thought it was real,” Mahmood said in an interview.

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“The thing that amazes me is that it has been folded into real websites for panic and anxiety disorder. It’s been folded into a website for depression. It’s been folded into hundreds of art blogs,” he added.

The parody is in response to the tactics used by the drug industry to sell their wares to the public. Consumer advertising for prescription medications, which are a staple of television advertising in the United States, was legalised in the country in 1997.

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A Jordanian who killed his divorced sister over rumors that she had a lover was cleared of premeditated murder because he acted in a “fit of rage,” after his family dropped charges, the Jordan Times reported Thursday.

The verdict was handed down Wednesday, five months after the 19-year-old university student shot to death his 22-year-old sister, 10 minutes after he was told that she had a lover out of wedlock, it said, quoting court papers.

The student, whose name was not disclosed, received a three-month jail sentence and walked free for time already served.

“The 10-minute interval between hearing of his sister’s immoral actions and meeting her face-to-face is proof that he did not plot the murder,” a court statement said.

The young man had turned himself in to the police after the murder claiming that he acted to “cleanse the family’s honor” and initially received a six-month prison sentence.

But the court slashed the verdict by half and changed the charge from premeditated murder to a misdemeanor “because the defendant killed his sister in a fit of rage,” in line with Article 98 of the penal code, the daily said.

It also argued that the “victim brought disgrace to her family and the defendant and tarnished their honor [because] her actions were against religion and social norms” in the conservative Muslim country.

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Most presidential candidates are trying to get people to say “yes.” Republican Sen. John McCain will be encouraging South Carolina students to say “no.”

The Arizona lawmaker is scheduled to speak Sunday night to about 1,500 middle and high school students about abstaining from premarital sex. Abstinence and abortion loom large as issues in this first-in-the-South primary state in the heart of the Bible Belt.

“Senator McCain has a long legislative record of supporting abstinence-based initiatives in his record in the U.S. Senate,” said Trey Walker, McCain’s South Carolina campaign director. “He thinks that abstinence is healthier and should be promoted in our society for young people.”

I know it will never happen, but one of these 1,500 middle schoolers should askMcCain if he, in fact, saved himself for marriage, and whether he was abstinent between his multiple marriages.

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FOK!user Conflict vond het niet zo leuk dat internetprovider UPC zomaar ongevraagd een zogenaamde “UPC Mediabox” afleverde. Daarom gaat hij, samen met vele andere FOK!kers, UPC een koekje van eigen deeg geven.

In een topic op het FOK!forum liet Conflict weten iedere dag een grindtegel te gaan sturen naar het gratis antwoordnummer van UPC. Niet veel later meldden andere FOK!kers ook graag mee te willen doen, en dat zijn er nu al meer dan tien. De spullen die opgestuurd gaan worden zijn niet meer alleen grindtegels, maar ook oude tv’s en modems. De FOK!kers gaan ook een brief bij hun spullen sturen, welke hieronder te vinden is.

Geachte heer/mevrouw,

Net als velen ben ik niet gecharmeerd van het door jullie toegekomen ‘aanbod’. Bij dit ‘aanbod’ wordt een UPC Mediabox afgeleverd. Ongevraagd.

Naast het feit dat het buitengewoon onbeleefd is om zomaar electronica naar mensen toe te sturen, is dit ook nog eens slecht voor het milieu, en een hoop werk voor de ontvangers van de pakketten.

In tegenstelling tot het pakketje dat door mij wordt toegezonden, wordt namelijk van de ontvangers verwacht dat zij het pakketje dat u hén toezendt weigeren of terugsturen indien zij geen gebruik willen maken van uw ‘aanbod’.

Nu weet niet iedereen wat hij/zij moet verwachten bij het ontvangen van een pakketje van UPC, en weten zij al zeker niet dat ze met het in ontvangst nemen van het pakketje aan een abonnement vastzitten.

Om mijn ongenoegen te uiten over uw ‘aanbieding’, stuur ik u bij deze mijn aanbieding. Wees gerust, met het aannemen van dit pakketje zit u NIET vast aan een abonnement. Sommige mensen hebben namelijk wél enig fatsoensbesef.

Hoogachtend,

Een ontevreden UPC klant

Part II of the Walter Reed story.

I’d really like to see William Kristol ask them to be quiet for six months…

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It seems to me that if you’re a designer, a proper designer not someone who learnt Photoshop in between phone calls, then design runs through your veins like Pantone 7418. But more than that, it’s there in every aspect of life. You can’t stop looking at things through your designer eyes. Everything you do is clouded by this thing that lives inside you.

Now, this is no bad thing. But I’m becoming fascinated by how this thing takes hold of us all and I’d like to share it with you lovely people.

So what’s it like, living with this disease? What does it make you do that other people don’t do? How does it affect you?

Let’s say you took a trip in to town one day. First off, you’d be incredibly upset by the shocking kerning on this roadsign.

Click to see the rest of the story… people who have this disease should get a good dose of super normal design…

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Kirk Yeager makes bombs from the stuff found under kitchen sinks. He does it to help the
FBI defend against what officials say is the next frontier for terrorists in the United States.

Ten years ago, peroxide-based bombs were mostly the work of young pranksters. But the easy-to-make yet deadly chemical cocktails were embraced in the late 1990s by Palestinian militants and suicide bombers bent on killing large groups of people.

Now, Yeager says, the “Mother of Satan” explosives are considered the most likely weapon that terrorists will use against the U.S., more so than a nuclear or radiological “dirty” bomb.

“Every serious terrorist group knows about them and knows how to make them,” Yeager said. The forensic scientist heads the explosives unit at the FBI’s laboratory in Quantico, Va., about 35 miles south of Washington.

“Bad guys are bombers. You don’t have to have the level of sophistication to make a bomb that you need to get nuclear materials,” Yeager said.

The bombs are made by mixing chemicals that are used in common household items, including hydrogen peroxide and paint thinner, and easily found at drug stores or hardware stores. Experts know them as TATP, short for triacetone triperoxide, and HMTD, or hexamethylene triperoxide diamine.

Next up: a total ban on paint thinner, and no more blond hair.

Thousands of people flap their arms and legs in unison, creating angel imprints, during a world record attempt for the most snow angels, in Bismarck, N.D., Saturday, Feb. 17, 2007. Organizers said they believe almost nine thousand people took part in the event. The previous world record was 3,784. (AP Photo/Will Kincaid)

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The world’s largest tropical glacier is in danger of disappearing within five years, according to international researchers meeting this week in San Francisco.

Ohio State glaciologist Lonnie Thompson and a team of scientists said they have found evidence the Qori Kalis glacier of the Quelccaya ice cap in the Peruvian Andes could lose half its mass in 12 months and could be gone five years from now.

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The Quelccaya ice cap covers 44 square kilometres in the Cordillera Oriental region and is the world’s largest tropical ice mass. Its biggest glacier, the Qori Kalis, has receded by at least 1.1 kilometres since 1963, when the first formal measurements were taken. The rate of retreat has increased from six metres per year between 1963 and 1978 to 60 metres per year now, said Thompson.