MKM Partners analyst Terry Kuittinen on Friday issued a note to investors reiterating a Buy rating on Motorola Mobility stock, setting the firm’s price target at $35. Kuittinen states that Motorola will likely see success with British carrier Orange, which launched Motorola’s new ATRIX smartphone ahead of upcoming competitors like the Samsung Galaxy S II and the LG Optimus 2X. The analyst also noted that the ATRIX is getting strong promotional backing elsewhere from carriers like TIM. In the U.S., Kuittinen thinks the delayed launch of Motorola’s upcoming DROID BIONIC won’t have much of an impact on the company’s sales, considering the higher pricing of 4G LTE phones like the LG Revolution, HTC ThunderBolt and Samsung DROID Charge. Motorola’s upcoming $200

Want a free copy of the best selling book The Orange Revolution? Read to the end. For the past few years I’ve been studying what makes the best teams different. Why do some work groups create breakthrough results—even in the midst of this great recession—and others, well, don’t. And in 2008 and 2009 we conducted a [...]

Guitarist takes music reviewer to court over slur but opposition claims case is latest spat between Kremlin and free-speaking cultural elite

Heard the one about the poodle, the goth and the Kremlin ideologue?

It sounds like a bad joke, but that is the riddle in Moscow as Russia's most famous music critic, Artemy Troitsky, 55, prepares to go on trial for allegedly insulting an equally celebrated rock star.

Criminal proceedings are being brought by Vadim Samoylov, the lank-haired former singer and guitarist of Agata Kristi (Agatha Christie), Russia's answer to the Sisters of Mercy.

The 46-year-old claims he was slandered when Troitsky, who became a legend during the Soviet era, called him a "trained poodle for Surkov" in a TV documentary broadcast in January about musicians who collaborate with people in power.

Vladislav Surkov is the first deputy chief of staff to president, and Deep Purple fan, Dmitry Medvedev, and is often called the grey cardinal of Russian politics. He wrote songs for a gloomy 2004 album called Peninsulas performed by Samoylov.

A first hearing in the case was due to start on Wednesday but was postponed because Troitsky was ill. He faces up to two years in prison if convicted of publicly insulting Samoylov. In a separate civil suit the musician has demanded 1m roubles (£22,000) in compensation.

The prosecution is being seen as much more than just a case of studded leather handbags. Over the last year there have been a series of clashes pitting Russia's ruling elite against opposition-leaning musicians and other cultural figures. The sharpest was when Yury Shevchuk of veteran rock band DDT upbraided Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, during a televised meeting, questioning whether Putin wanted "real liberalisation and democratisation for a real country, where public organisations are not suffocated and where people don't feel scared of a policeman on the street".

Earlier this year the vivacious former ballerina with the Bolshoi theatre, Anastasiya Volochkova, resigned from Putin's United Russia party with an expletive ridden tirade, saying she had been "used" and tricked into criticising the jailed oil tycoon, Mikhail Khodorkovksy.

Troitsky is already being prosecuted in a separate criminal slander case after calling a policeman "one of the foulest cops in Russia".

The officer was involved in investigating a controversial car crash when two women were killed by an oil executive's car. Troitsky lost a civil case connected to the incident last month.Speaking in a phone interview, Troitsky said he believed the "poodle prosecution" was "not Samoylov's initiative", adding: "These court cases are a staged and programmed campaign against me. It's an attempt to teach me a lesson, to tame me, to get me to shut my mouth and to show how public figures in modern Russia should behave."

Troitsky said the fact he had arranged for Yuri Shevchuk, frontman of the rock band DDT and a critic of Vladimir Putin, to appear on stage with Bono when U2 came to Russia last year was one reason he had upset the authorities.

A spokesman for Samoylov refused to comment on the case.

Russia's government has made several attempts to co-opt popular musicians for political gain in recent years. One of the first was Surkov's meeting with prominent bands in 2005. That rendezvous came shortly after the orange revolution in Ukraine, when Ukrainian rockers such as Okean Elzy whipped up the crowds.

"The Kremin became very nervous that our musicians might start trying on orange clothes themselves," said Troitsky.

He added: "Now, in the last year, our society has started showing signs of life and protest. The authorities want to get the loyalty of well-known artists in case of political turbulence ahead."

In another sign of tension between politicians and Russia's cultural intelligentsia last week, a popular poet did not attend a meeting to which Putin invited artists and performers.

Dmitry Bykov, who is known for caustic pastiches of classical Russian poetry, instead published a series of verses in which he mockingly compared the prime minister to a "tsar" with a "tough style and a voice of metal".

Bykov refused to comment when contacted by the Guardian, but gave a hint of his contempt for Putin's gathering. "I write so many books and all you want to ask me about whether or not I went to meet some third-rate politician," he said.

The environment may finally play a part in Canada's political debate now the Green party has its first seat

Green party leader Elizabeth May added to Canada's psephological earthquake on Monday night by winning her party's first seat in British Columbia, just as Canada swept Stephen Harper's government to its first majority.

May's party took the west coast Saanich and Gulf Islands seat from natural resources minister Gary Lunn by more than 7,000 votes.

Significantly, Lunn's department presides over Canada's development of Alberta's tar sands, its mineral resources including Saskatchewan's uranium, (which makes Canada the world's leading exporter for the world's nuclear industry,) and its huge water resources that make provinces such as Quebec and British Columbia major producers of hydro-electricity.

Now May will present the voice for the environment, in contrast to other parties who have played political lip service to environmental issues ever since the Liberal party ratified the Kyoto protocol in late 2003.

Canada's international agreement commits it to reduce its soaring greenhouse gas emissions to 6% below 1990 levels by 2012, but Harper in 2007 abandoned reducing its carbon emissions ahead of the first Kyoto period coming into force. Both the Liberal and New Democratic (NDP) parties had committed themselves to introducing a cap and trade carbon market.

However, as the Liberals found their seats decimated by over half to become parliament's minority opposition party – the first time in their history they have not formed either the government or the official opposition – the NDP will have to carry the case for carbon markets in the House of Commons.

May has spent decades working on environmental issues since she was a student and has proved to be an adept communicator. Exempt from the televised leaders' debates in this election due to having no parliamentary representation, the Greens will finally be able to promote the environment in Question Period (similar to Prime Minister's Questions in the UK) and participate in parliamentary committees while talking to journalists on a daily basis on Parliament Hill.

May will help ensure that climate change and clean energy issues are a prominent part of the national conversation over the next four years, Clare Demerse of environmental think tank the Pembina Institute told the Guardian.

"Along with other opposition MPs, provincial governments, not to mention Canadians, she will now be able to put pressure on Stephen Harper's government for stronger environmental policies," Demerse added.

"It's not easy to get a seat as a Green MP in a first-past-the-post system like ours, so I think Elizabeth May's win in BC demonstrates that Canadians clearly see environmental protection as a priority," Demerse concluded.

To put this into perspective, Stephen Harper's Tories failed to even discuss the environment. Climate change warranted a brief mention during the televised debates. Harper's campaign message was an ultimately successful call for a majority in order to steer Canada out of the global recession – an exit strategy that will depend much upon the country developing its natural resources.

Similarly, the Liberals and NDP concentrated their message on welfare, health and benefitting Canadian families.

But as May succinctly noted at a one-day energy policy conference last autumn at McGill University: "The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment."

The Green party's future could be bright. The NDP's orange revolution – particularly in Québec, where the separatist Bloc party was all but wiped out — could signal a change in voter intentions, including a move to the Greens.

Disenchanted by traditional Liberal-Conservative choices, voter turnout also increased nearly three points to over 61% from the 2008 election. While short of the 70% turnouts seen before the 1990s, it reflects in part that younger voters who are more inclined to vote Green left apathy at home and headed for the polling stations.

Toby Heaps, the editor of Toronto-based Corporate Knights magazine, who campaigned with May, told the Guardian: "She is arguably the best communicator in the house now and will be a powerful force for for a more civilised parliament."

The victory is also significant for the party's organisation. Heaps said: "The almost one million Canadians who vote Green now have a hook to hang their hat on. It is a tangible election result that will bolster fundraising and we have a core election team that now knows how to win."

• Felix von Geyer is a Montreal-based freelance sustainability and global affairs journalist

Civil resistance in the face of violence

Civil resistance – popular nonviolent struggle waged by ordinary people against dictatorship, foreign intervention, colonial occupation, corruption, or injustice with the use of diverse methods of nonviolent action - is by no means a new phenomenon. It has been practiced in a strategic manner for at least two centuries, going back as far as the American colonists’ mass boycotts and refusal to comply with the orders of the British crown that won them de-facto independence even before the American Revolution began.[1] As the forthcoming book Why Civil Resistance Works, by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan shows, both the frequency of instances in which civil resistance is waged and the knowledge of how it is effective are now accelerating.
Tunisians celebrate their independence. Demotix/Sghaier Khaled. All rights reserved.

Consequently, civil resistance has a chance to overtake violent resistance as the global default method for grievance and rights-based struggles in the twenty-first century. At the same time, these positive developments are paralleled by the determination of autocrats and their enforcers to use every means at their disposal, not least violence, to crush civil resisters. This violence, far from showing the weakness of civil resistance, is to be expected precisely at a time of high apprehension that the walls of fear around their populations are actually crumbling. Regimes will then reflexively resort to such an action. For civil resisters, this reactive use of violence can create as many opportunities as dangers. It then depends on the skills of nonviolent challengers, such as their unity, planning and nonviolent discipline, whether they are able to counter violence with actions that raise the cost of maintaining autocratic control while, at the same time, minimizing the risks for themselves. 

 

The idea of popular sovereignty

Recent popular Arab revolts have reaffirmed what many other nations that experienced similar mass nonviolent struggles in the past, including South Africa, Poland, Philippines, Chile, Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Iran, have already so vividly demonstrated: the legitimacy of regimes and more broadly their perceived sovereignty derive from the people and operationally depend on popular acquiescence to their rule. Kafkasque state structures of nefarious powerholders who claim to represent and defend the people, are the wrong referents for understanding the dynamics of political power inside a country. No longer can political power be seen as a constant, unchanging physical ability and material capability of rulers to exercise top-down control over their people: but rather a much more diffused, immaterial force shaped by the readiness of the great majority to accept that control or to withdraw their consent and start resisting oppressive structures. In that sense, political power derives from a social contract or a transactional relationship between rulers and ruled whereby the latter agrees to be bound by the contract so long as the government exercises just authority, provides security and people feel that the benefits of accepting state legitimacy are proportionate to the loss of rights that, in a non-democratic society, are likely to be entailed. In this bottom-up process of give and take, when the conventional means of influencing politics such as elections, political parties or interest groups are not available, people can exercise intrinsic political power through nonviolent collective action, with the goal of building a just and popular sovereign order through representative government and accountable civil institutions. In that sense, civil resistance is a merely practical illustration of the exercise of the authority of the people. It aims to advertise and lay claim to the source of both legitimacy and power where it has always lain, though not always visibly – with themselves.

In this people-driven change, the nature of the state is shaped and defined by the extent to which its internal sovereignty stays representatively ‘popular’ and the degree to which a resort to resistance methods that aims to expand this ‘popular’ dimension of government remains within the boundaries of nonviolent defiance - e.g. actions that are not physically harmful even though they may compel compliance. The refocusing of the purpose of the state through the practical lenses of popular or people-centric sovereignty, which both legitimizes and is built on the practice of civil resistance, should have tremendous implications for global politics and its underlying international legal framework that has been constructed around states but has evolved in practice to incorporate human-centric principles. Civil resistance and an emerging notion of a “people polity” may represent a decisive force for a final push away from traditional state-driven discourse and practice, represented, by the idea of non-intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign state, towards people-oriented, popular sovereignty based on the rights and responsibility to uphold them.

 

Civil resistance and the existing international legal framework

International law, although state-centric in essence (i.e. states negotiate treaties according to their interests) has recognized to a certain extent the idea of civil resistance, as we will explain. It arises in at least three different realms of international law: 1) international humanitarian law which regulates the conduct of armed conflicts and protection of unarmed civilians, 2) international human rights law, which is much broader in its application as it regulates situations of peace and war and includes norms directly relevant to one of civil resistance’s cornerstone rights—the right to peaceful assembly, and finally, 3) the law pertaining to the UN charter, where issues of non intervention in the internal affairs of a state or the concept of R2P are addressed. 

1.     International humanitarian law (IHL) does not offer much normative support for the idea of civil resistance. It takes note of the resort to armed violence between organized parties and then sets the legal limit to the use of that force with a view to protecting civilians who are not participating in hostilities. More precisely, the right to peaceful protest is not regulated by IHL. That does not mean however that IHL is irrelevant. Indeed, when and if peaceful protest slides into armed violence, IHL can determine the extent to which a state is allowed to use force against combatants and the degree to which civilians should be protected.  

2.     International human rights law, which comprises the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), different treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) as well as customary international law (binding on all states), deals more precisely with issues relating to civil resistance. Though the right to protest is not covered per se in the mentioned instruments, it can nevertheless be derived from the right to freedom of opinion and expression which “includes the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers” (Article 19 UDHR, Article 19 ICCPR) and the right to peaceful assembly (Article 20 UDHR, Article 21 ICCPR). The right to freedom of opinion and of expression as well as the right to peaceful assembly are also protected in regional instruments such as the European Convention on Human Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights. Consequently, the right to peaceful protest, derived from related and relevant legal norms, can be said to be guaranteed by international law and can thus be enforced through a court of law as well as through quasi-judicial bodies, such as the UN Human Rights Committee.   

If infringed, individuals can obtain reparations and compensation from the state that disregarded that right. However, there could be limitations imposed on the right to protest. For example, freedom of expression and of association can be limited if the respect of the rights and reputation of others are at stake, for the protection of national security, public order and for reasons of public health and morals. Furthermore, those rights can be abridged in times of public emergency. This means that a state can opt out from respecting the rights concerned in exceptional circumstances – a stipulation that reflects the inherent state-centric structure of international law. Although special procedures have to be followed in order to lawfully derogate from those rights, one of them being in particular that the state of emergency must be temporary, many undemocratic countries keep states of emergencies in place for many years, as in, for example, Yemen, Algeria, Syria or just recently in Egypt where it remained in force for decades. It is interesting to note that in the recent events in the Arab world, civil protesters did not demand at first a change of regime, but asked for the lifting of emergency measures that kept the people for so long outside the purview of the law and without a reliable zone of treatment under the law. In 2007, Peter Ackerman and Michael Glennon observed that autocrats are actually obliged to explain the legal rationale for suppressing rights and dissidence, even though they so rarely do. Four years later, civil resistance in the Middle East and North Africa has shown the extent to which rulers failed to respect this principle and reaped their people’s wrath as a consequence of that negligence.

3.     Despite the principle of nonintervention in internal affairs of the state enshrined in the UN Charter, contemporary international law confirms that this principle cannot be invoked by states when serious violations of human rights take place. Following international military intervention in Libya, the debate about the idea of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) was re-sparked. The concept of R2P that is still more of a political rather than legal notion was born out of a desire of the international community not to remain silent and passive in the face of massive violations of human rights (e.g. genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes). R2P is the last resort to be used by the international community with the approval of the UN Security Council, to intervene militarily to protect people‘s lives. However, as the current international military intervention in Libya and the earlier one in Kosovo demonstrated, R2P  was used when civil resistance was actually abandoned by the opposition in favour of armed struggle that in turn, handed advantages to the side with superior fire power - usually the state and its army - while militarily weaker rebels and civilians faced decimation. Given this practice, paradoxically, R2P may offer little incentive for people to continue mounting nonviolent resistance while a reward in the form of improved prospects for international military intervention might be forthcoming when a weaker side takes arms against more powerful opponent. While referring precisely to this paradox, Vetton Surroi, Kosovo politician and publicist once noted that what military intervention in Kosovo showed was that, “if you want to draw international attention you have to fight [and] use violence to achieve your goals.” Consequently, the current practice of R2P seems to be sending a wrong message to unarmed insurrectionists: ‘when you use nonviolent resistance we will ignore you but when you take up arms we may support you’ and thus, can be counterproductive for civil resistance in general. 

 

Still, the international community has a responsibility to assist civil resistance. A Diplomat’s Handbook for Democracy Development Support with its case studies of diplomats assisting nonviolent movements makes a strong case in favor of the international community’s “right to help” civil resisters and the right of nonviolent activists to receive that help. The handbook offers examples of direct assistance, including, among others, the presence of foreign diplomats during attempted arrests or at trials of activists. Targeted international sanctions not only against a dictator but his closest family members may also play an important psychological role. General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the former Polish communist leader, once made a humorous but telling remark that after the west introduced sanctions against his government, he had to take a great deal of heat from his wife and other family members who could no longer go to Paris. Similarly, the international community could now consider targeted sanctions against wives, grown-up sons and daughters and relatives of the Middle East leaders who use violence to suppress nonviolent protests. At the same time, both the handbook as well as the international study on  Nonviolent Civic Action in Support of Human Right and Democracy published by the European Parliament emphasize that international support should not - in contrast to R2P - substitute for or drive resistance, which would only disempower nonviolent action-takers. The emphasis must be placed on the responsibility of the international community to favour civil resistance over armed violence. This could be facilitated by a more dynamic and comprehensive interpretation of the existing international law in the light of a broader understanding of those rights - highlighted below - of which civil resistance is comprised.

 

Human rights dimensions of civil resistance

Instead of being a passive observer of the ascendancy of civil resistance or a reactive suppressant of violence, the international community has a unique opportunity to play an instrumental role in facilitating a radical departure from the sovereignty of states towards the popular sovereignty of people. This kind of leadership would require a recognition that the growing practice of civil resistance and the repression used against it both call for a better understanding of the diversity of human rights being utilized by those using civil resistance. A normative framework of civil resistance would arise logically from the right of individuals to join and participate in nonviolent civic activity despite the risks involved in some societies and the uncertainty of a positive outcome. Thus the questions arise of why people decide to be part of nonviolent movements or become silent supporters or, at least, to distance themselves from the regime and stay neutral as the army did during the Bulldozer Revolution in Serbia, the Carnation Revolution in Georgia, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution or the Egyptian January 25 Revolution. The answer to these questions requires  a broader understanding of the richness of rights involved in civil resistance that include, next to the traditional rights covered by the existing international legal framework, the right to dignity, the right to defend future generations and the right to protect my country, and the right to life.

Cleaning Tahrir Square. Demotix/Alain El Hajj. All rights reserved.

 Right to Dignity

Dignity is rooted in the ancient human desire for personal respect and space, and its corollary, the right to defy being treated with disrespect - of which a state’s denial of rights and justice is the ultimate manifestation. This defiance symbolizes an empowered individual who rejects living a lie (i.e. the fiction that living under censorship, repression, fear is normal), construed from the behaviour of an oppressive regime that strips away a person’s humanity while insulting his intellect. A lack of respect for people’s independent capacity to think and choose has been a powerful force for recent civic rebellions. For example, the rap anthem of the Orange Revolution made people sing: “We are not beasts of burden; we are not goats,” which was a vivid expression of protest against the rigging of elections in so audacious a manner that it quickly turned into a powerful affront to people’s intelligence. A brazen electoral fraud meant more than simple statistical cheating; it was a sign for people that the government wanted to treat them as animals that lacked self-will. Another example of people’s feeling of humiliation that led them to rise up against a dictator was a sign held by one of the Tunisian protesters that read: “Have you seen !? A President who treats his people like idiots!!!” In yet another struggle for one’s own dignity and against constant humiliation, this time in Egypt, one of the protesting vendors explained about the revolution: “This isn’t the January 25th revolution” - while referring to the date when the Egyptian revolution started -  “This is a revolution for dignity.” Similarly, in recent popular demonstrations in Morocco against King Mohammed VI, one of the protesters explained that the demands for rights, end to corruption, dissolution of government and change of constitution meant that, “this [was] the people speaking to get its dignity back.” People’s defiance against humiliation and against a lack of respect for who they are stems from an inviolable right to dignity that constitutes an important part of the rights-based framework of civil resistance.

Right to defend future generations

Civil resistance also represents a right to protect future generations from a predatory ruler. The members of the Solidarity movement that challenged the communist regime in Poland were convinced that they were unlikely to witness Poland’s liberation. Their resilience in persisting in their opposition to the authoritarian regime came from their belief that they were defying injustice to pave the road to freedom if not for themselves then for their children or children of their children. Nonviolent resistance was thus seen as a struggle of generations. In Egypt, a very similar theme of saving future generations was clearly heard among the protesters in Tahrir Square: "I'm doing this for my children. What life is this?“ or "My son will not suffer what I have suffered. This ends here!" Another Egyptian demonstrator explained: “I am the father of a 1-year-old daughter, and since I was growing up I’ve seen Mubarak. I don’t want my daughter to live under the same dictatorship.” Civil resistance is such a powerful force precisely because people, through their genuinely altruistic determination to resist and, if necessary, to suffer even without a positive end in sight, are still willing to rise up in order to defend and save future generations from oppression.

Right to protect my country

A practical illustration of popular sovereignty rooted in the notion of civil resistance is the right to protect one’s own country from an unjust government. Egyptians’ views of their resistance expressed during the demonstrations emphasized the struggle for the soul of their own country on one hand and against a destructive, estranged government on the other. At Tahrir Square, one could hear and read: "We Want To Keep This Country Safe, They Want To Destroy It,” or “I love my country. It is the government I am afraid of.”  In another and ongoing nonviolent struggle that faces government’s violent oppression, a Syrian opposition member was quoted as saying: “They’re armed and we’re unarmed. If they want to kill us, they can kill us. If they want to arrest us, they can arrest us. But no matter how much blood gets spilled and how violent it gets, this is our country and we’re not giving it up.” The protesters were finally expressing openly what many had felt strongly but discussed only in private: that their ruler no longer belonged to their country. This was because, as Thomas Aquinas so eloquently put it almost eight centuries ago: “It is not rebellion to depose [an unjust ruler], for he is himself a rebel…” In other words, an illegitimate ruler turns himself into an occupier or, using the words of one of the Iranian protesters from July 2009, “We are not terrorists; that is what our government has become.” The country has to be protected against such an extremist-occupier in the very same way that the people are allowed to mount a defence of their own country if it faces foreign domination, occupation, invasion or terrorism. This also suggests that those who used to follow the orders of a dictator, e.g. the military and security forces, have not only the right to disobey an unjust government but a duty to do so, to protect the country by joining the rest of population in popular defiance. As such, civil resistance represents a right to defend people, institutions and territory against a system or/and individual that, by virtue of its oppressive acts, has alienated itself from the rest of population, voluntarily abrogated its own rights to be part of the society, and become unwanted strangers in a country they no longer belong to.

Right to life

Civil resistance epitomizes as well the right to life itself. People wage civil resistance to oppose tyranny because it causes and therefore stands for death. One of the Serbian civic resisters against Slobodan Milosevic once noted about the dictator,  “His language smelled like death.” Recently, women protesters in Sanna, Yemen, held a placard that read, “The nation wants freedom. Stop Killing” and rejected the Yemeni president’s accusation that by mixing with men in joint protests women committed haram – an Arabic word for sin. Instead, they said,  the killings perpetrated by the government amounted to haram. While the oppressive government often describes the past, present and future through the language of conflict, wars, violent martyrology, victimhood, vitriolic accusations and death, civil resistance offers a much more positive and healing view of both the struggle and of life. As an Iranian protester put it in July 2009: “Please tell the world how much we love life … We just want to be free.” More recently, one Yemeni woman held up a banner “We went out to ask for life, and they are killing us.” Civil resistance is thus as much about a rejection of death as it is about an utmost manifestation and reaffirmation of the right to life.

The traditional repertoire of rights that constitutes an existing legal framework for civil resistance would benefit from being augmented by rights that are derived from the very practice of people who decide to join nonviolent movements and resist unjust rule, despite repression. This broadening of a rights’ perspective vis-à-vis civil resistance can offer more legal and moral justification for democracies to offer assistance to people that fight nonviolently against state oppression while, at the same time, paving the way for a genuine transformation of political conflict.

 

In conclusion: civil resistance and political conflict

An augmented international legal framework, re-energised to protect and reinforce the practice of civil resistance will help the international community to become an active stakeholder in civil resistance, in the same way that it has developed into an agent for advancing human rights.  The emergent new form of political transformation that is represented by civil resistance is a fact. A pragmatic recognition of this development, as reflected in newly-framed, derivative rights, could save millions of lives in the years ahead.

Ultimately this could lead to galvanizing ordinary people everywhere to becoming far more involved in democratic political action. In perhaps a majority of the world’s societies, politics is often viewed as based on deception, self-interest, and morally questionable practices. In contrast, as Jack DuVall argues, civil resistance has the power genuinely to arouse people because it represents their grievances and beliefs. It also relies on transparent, public deliberation and reason in determining both the goals and actions of a movement. People who join the movement often feel ennobled by their resistance activities, particularly when they realize they are having an impact. In effect, they become their own leaders and stakeholders of political change.

Cleaning Tahrir Square. Demotix/Alain El Hajj. All rights reserved.

Nonviolent uprising can thus be transcendent, crossing ideological, ethnic or religious boundaries. In Egypt, this transcendental and ennobling experience was visible in chants such as: “Muslim, Christian, we are all Egyptian!” or “Sorry for disturbance. We build Egypt”, as well as in the images of people cleaning up the Cairo streets and Tahrir Square after the failed crackdown by police security on the protesters the night before. The transformation of political contestation is also embodied in the way civil resisters see their victory. This is not a vengeful triumph but rather a magnanimous feat distinguished by moderation, reflected in the willingness of the nonviolent actionists to negotiate with and offer a peaceful future to those who were part of the ancien régime – a process that more often than not leads to ‘pacted transitions’ as has happened in Chile, Poland, Czechoslovakia, or in South Africa. In contrast to violent revolutions, a political order that emerges as a result of bottom-up, nonviolent civil insurrection does not see new Bastilles constructed in place of old ones. In fact, the record shows that civil resistance is almost five times more likely to lead to the establishment of durable democracy and open society, than transitions initiated by either top-down, elite-to-elite negotiations or external interventions.

Civil resistance might also transform the nature of political contestation in yet another way. Increasing emphasis on popular sovereignty that forces government to compete with a civic movement for popular representation and people-centric legitimacy, may build an enhanced and comprehensive international legal framework that covers a greater range of legally binding or at least potentially enforceable rights associated with civil resistance, and begin to develop a growing understanding and appreciation of the practical importance of civil resistance tactics as well as the strategic benefits of remaining nonviolent. In turn, all these developments might eventually lead to the emergence of a ‘level playing field’ where both political challengers and their opponents recognize the strategic liability of violence and begin trying to outsmart each other in a new game of nonviolent political competition. This future might seem distant in many societies, given the volume of extreme political violence we see in a number of civil struggles, but to borrow a line from Paul Loeb, “the impossible will take a little while.”

 

---

[1] Walter H. Conser Jr., “Civil Resistance and the Struggle for United States Independence” in Maciej Bartkowski, eds. Rediscovering Nonviolent History of National Struggles, forthcoming.

 

New Democrats are pinching themselves to be sure their orange revolution is real.

I am a great admirer of John Keane. His writings on Democracy have helped shaped all our understandings of the History of Democracy, but I think that he is wrong in several important aspects of his historical characterization of the latest stages of the Democratic Revolution in the Middle East.

As an old hand in Soviet and East European studies I have come across the idea of refolution before. It was one of the mixes of  words that we were struggling with over two decades ago as the Soviet Union disgauged itself of its European satellites and struggled to find a peaceful way into modernity. I think that current developments are related to those times, and that we do not need to have new words to describe them. The old words Democracy and Revolution are still quite functional, especially if we use one as a noun and the other as an adjective. There are two possible combinations: Democratic Revolutions and Revolutionary Democracy, and we need to be aware of the differences.

Democratic Revolutions. This is a term that has been much used by historians and political scientists. My University has taught a famous course on ‘The Age of Revolutions’ for the last 30 years. This is a course   that refers to the Democratic Revolutions of the late 18th Century in America and France. But this was an Age of Revolution in those countries for only part of the population: mainly for the free and property owning groups. The Age of Revolutions for much of Europe was delayed to the long 19th Century and although linked to Democracy it ended up in places in unstable forms as Dictatorships and Totalitarianism, and in others in more durable forms as ‘managed’ democracies. A wave of Democratic Revolutions swept the world in the late 20th Century as former Colonial state achieved independence. But despite the great emphasis placed on Democracy in the origins of these new states (and often in their names), the nature of these democracies soon deteriorated to the managed democratic shells that predominate today. Nowadays almost every regime calls itself a democracy, but these democracies are managed by all sorts of privileged groups and individuals using electoral fraud and repression. What they need is not another Democratic Revolution (a revolution to set up a state that describes itself as democratic), but a revolutionary change in the nature of that democracy.

Revolutionary Democracy is a possible outcome of a Democratic Revolution, but so far it has been a rather elusive and fleeting outcome. We saw some elements of it in Russia between February and October 1917 and in the early stages of most Democratic Revolutions. But generally the Democratic Revolution fails to transform itself into an operating Revolutionary Democracy. The Revolutionaries who took power generally transform themselves into oligarchic elites or ruling parties that become divorced from democracy. They quickly become skilled in handling and managing democracy, either by crude demagogy or by even cruder electoral fraud and restrictions on criticism of the regime.    

The Russian Revolution of February 1917 had been deeply democratic-with almost everyone opposing the Tsar, but there were intense differences about how the new Revolutuionary state should be run. The Bolsheviks had the overwhelming majority of support amongst the workers and soldiers in the main Russian cities in October 1917, but the peasants who made up 80% of the population tended to support the Socialist Revolutionaries- SRs. In fact the SRs received 60% of the votes in the elections to the Constituent Assembly. This actually indicates that the Bolsheviks probably polled quite well in the countryside, but not well enough to claim a democratic victory. When the  Bolsheviks forcibly dissolved the constituent assembly and remained in power they could not claim to be running a democracy, and they didn’t. They changed the franchise of the peasants, who were unequally represented by deputies in the new Soviets and they described this accurately as the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

It was Stalin in the 1936 constitution that gave peasants equal representation with workers in the Soviet and introduced what he described as ‘the most democratic constitution in the world’. By this time the party had developed other ways of managing Soviet democracy, that replaced the need for competition and meaningful elections. This was formally a transfer of governmental system from a formal dictatorship to a system that now claimed to be democratic and so it could be called a Democratic Revolution, but the managed Democracy that resulted from this change was very undemocratic. Stalin and his successors never took democracy seriously, and only pretended to be democratic. They had elections, but with only one candidate, and the electoral commissions knew full well that their jobs, and possibly their lives depended on their putting on a good show of democracy and claiming overwhelming support for the regime.

With time the regime became  excessively confident in their ability to tame the idea of democracy.  Brezhnev signed the Helsinki Accords in 1975, confident that he could manage the problem of isolated dissidents who protested against the abuse of Human Rights and Democracy that the Soviet Union had now so openly claimed to support, but which it was so blatantly ignoring.

And for a while the Soviet managers could handle the problem. Samizdat, the Helsinki Monitoring Group and Western supported Radio stations like Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe appeared to be having only limited success, but these appearances were deceptive. Future generations of Russian, Soviets and East Europeans were beginning to think differently, and were not being as easily intimidated as the managers had presumed. And then in the late 1980s the leading Soviet political managers  Gorbachev, Yakovlev, Shevanardze and others, eventually came around to placing ‘democratization’ onto their agenda.

 

I remember well how the Soviet Union was transfixed by the peaceful democratic revolution that Gorbachev and his colleagues carried out with the ‘unleashing of glasnost’ (Openness)’ and the revolutionary force of democratization once it had been released from managerial control in the USSR. It wasn’t the unleashing of Democracy that brought down the USSR, but the upsurge of personal and Nationalist interests that were mobilised against the revolutionary force of democratization. For a while the new Nationalism that came to the fore in post-Soviet states,  in alliance with the vested interests of the old security system, military and managerial elites, were themselves successful in  their attempts to tame and de-revolutionise democracy. But they like the USSR before them were trapped by their pretences at being democratic. The Orange Revolution of 2006 was a clear indication that the spirit of the old dissidents and early Gorbachev period were alive;  the population could no longer be fooled by signs of democratic fraud and they went onto the streets to protest the fraud.

 
It is the recurrent demonstration of refusals to accept electoral fraud, and the false promises of democracy that link the USSR and East European Revolutions of  1987-90, to the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in  2006, the Belarusian demonstrations against electoral fraud in 2009-11 and the Middle East demonstrations and Democratic Revolutions of today.
 
Professor Keane is mistaken when he tries to emphasise the separation between these events. With respect I do not think that he is fair on Lech Walesa or Vaclav Havel when he calls them ‘self-selected saviours of the nation’, and I don’t think that he is right in saying that such figures as Walesa and Havel are absent in the Middle Eastern Revolutions. It is clear that the Revolutions are not being led by professional revolutionaries like Lenin or Trotsky, but Lenin and Trotsky did not lead the Russian Democratic Revolutions of 1905 or February 1917.  Solidarnosc was led by a minor trade union activist who was an electrician, it was the revolution that turned him into a revolutionary leader. And Havel was a philosopher/playwrite and not a professional revolutionary before he was declared a Dissident by the authorities. Gorbachev may be different as he was a political leader who was trying desperately to resolve an intractable political (and economic) problem before he, rather unwillingly stumbled into democratic revolution. (In those days we debated as to whether Gorbachev was an in-system reformer, or whether his priorities would lead him to go further and change the system if required. At one point he appeared to reach a point when he felt that there was no turning.) I wouldn’t call this process ‘self-selection’, the process was more dialectical and complex than that.

There are undoubtedly electricians and philosophers in the Arab democratic revolution, and some of them and other members of non-political professions are likely to be pressed into political leadership, and may well be transformed by that process. Some politicians who had earlier served the regime loyally may also be persuaded that Democracy is the way to go.

What is new about the process is the expansion of the public monitoring possibilities through new technology. It is this which is making the old hypocrisies and frauds more apparent. The role of election monitors is becoming more important. Earlier elections could be easily managed by the government. It was the government who appointed a compliant electoral commission, and these electoral commissions had a tendency to do what their governments wanted them to do.

In order to pretend to be a real democracy, it was necessary to allow some observers, and even international electoral monitors. The international observers would not interfere in the elections and would only write up accounts of what they had observed. These accounts would typically only be published a long time after the election and these monitors have been criticised for allowing corrupt regimes to appear more legitimate than they were.  

But such criticism is being shown to be wrong. The radical nature and extent of recent complaints about electoral fraud have been greatly strengthened by the knowledge of what these Monitors and Observers have been saying. Their reports do embolden the disadvantaged candidates, and generally they do make it more difficult for electoral commissions to be so blatant in allowing fraud to happen. In the regions of the former USSR there are CIS electoral observers who seem to find nothing strange with a 90% turnout at voluntary elections in Chechnya with a record level of support registered for a regime that the locals appear to detest. But even Russian deputies are beginning to challenge some of these bizarre results. (see the mass walkout of Deputies in 2009).  The compliant CIS monitors were set up precisely to counter the revolutionary force that other less compliant monitors were having, and as we saw in the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, in recent elections in Belarus and in Russia this did not succeed. Elsewhere, and particularly in the Middle East these observers and monitors have been particularly significant.

The exciting thing about recent developments is the explosion of revolutionary democracy in states that have claimed to be democratic and in which their democracies have been subject to the revolutionising impact of massive democratic monitoring.   

We don’t need new words to describe this, John Keane himself gave us the words to describe it. These are democratic revolutions in the age of monitory democracy and they are causing a democratic revolutions to be built. Through active monitory procedures they may even stay democratic.  

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Ukraine is currently undergoing a crisis, according to several of its leading intellectuals. It is not an economic quandary, but rather one of self-perception and future path. Six years after the Orange Revolution had appeared to put an end to a neo-Soviet leadership, the country has yet to establish a national identity and a clear direction. One of its leading writers comments that although Ukraine is celebrating its 20th year of independence, it will cease to exist in 20 years’ time.

Are such statements credible? Why is there such a crisis of identity today?

In terms of politics, there is no question that the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych has reversed some of the gains made in 2004-05. Both Western analyst Alexander Motyl and Ukrainian writer Mykola Riabchuk have highlighted the cronyism and corruption of the Yanukovych team.

But it was author and poet Yuri Andrukhovych who expressed the “doomsday scenario” in an interview [in Ukrainian] on 5 April on the website polit.ua (Ukrainian Politics). Noting that Ukraine is divided today between “Soviet Russians and Ukrainians”, he maintained that opponents of the country’s independence are as numerous as its supporters. In this situation normal development is impossible. Instead Ukraine is being dragged into what Andrukhovych calls “the Russian world” under the leadership of its east Ukrainian clan.

In his 18 March article “Beauty and the Beasts”, Riabchuk observes that the leading Ukrainian oligarchs are afraid of a pro-western policy, open competition, and the rule of law and thus abandoned the more moderate and centrist position they had held under the presidency of Leonid Kuchma (1994-2004) and opted instead to back the Russophile group that is currently in power, which relies on tight control and brutal crackdowns against opponents in the best of Soviet traditions.

The Holodomor (1932-33) has become a symbol of
Ukrainian national suffering at the hands of Russia.
Some pro-Russian Ukrainians contest this version of
history.

Regarding the pro-Ukraine policies heralded by the Orange Revolution, Kyrylo Halushko, a sociologist from the Drahomaniv National University in Kyiv, speaking at the University of Alberta on 7 April, commented that they were identified closely with the personal fortunes of President Viktor Yushchenko and therefore disappeared from view once the latter’s popularity began to drop sharply. Thus national symbols such as Ivan Mazepa, Symon Petlyura, and the Famine-Holodomor of 1933 are barely recognised in contemporary school textbooks.

An additional problem has been the figure responsible for those textbooks, Dmytro Tabachnyk, Ukraine’s Minister of Education and Science, Youth and Sports. In fact Tabachnyk, who has even been chided by Ukraine’s Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov for antagonising teachers, symbolises what critics perceive as the fundamentally anti-Ukrainian nature of the Yanukovych Cabinet.

How can Ukraine attain a national identity if its national leaders deny that one exists?

A study conducted several years ago by scholar Yaroslav Hrytsak contrasted popular opinion in two antithetical cities, namely Hrytsak’s native L’viv and Donetsk; one Ukrainian-speaking, Europe-oriented and pressing hard for recognition of nationalist heroes; the other Russian-speaking, Sovietised, and supportive of the Red Army heroes of the “Great Patriotic War”.

The point, however, is not that both identities exist—they surely do—but that they represent the extremities. Most Ukrainians are not interested in going back to the Soviet Union and the younger generation cannot even remember it.

Moreover, even the Yanukovych government wishes to join the Free Trade Area of the European Union. It is not yet confined within what Andrukhovych calls “the Russian space”. It has not even joined the Common Economic Space with Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited Kyiv in April 2011 with a mission to coax Yanukovych to integrate the Ukrainian economy more closely with Moscow. Economic pressure is today’s substitute for the more forcible methods of the Soviet era. Already there is talk that the agreement on gas prices might be waived, and Ukraine could pay $350 per 1,000 cubic meters rather than its current $260.

Dmytro Tabachnyk, Ukraine’s Minister of
Education and Science, Youth and Sports.
For many, Tabachnyk symbolises the
Yanukovych government's inherent
anti-Ukrainianism

Ukraine’s situation admittedly is troubling, but even the Donetsk group currently in control has its own priorities, and these are national by default. They have no wish to be subsumed to the interests of their larger neighbour.

Ultimately then, Ukraine may be defined not for what it is, but what it is not. And the key goal for Ukrainian intellectuals should be to find issues of common consent to identify what is Ukraine without alienating a large portion of the population. The recent past remains too divisive to be used as a basis.

The first task is to build up a strong opposition force that embraces democracy and the centrism of the Kuchma era without the corruption. The removal of Tabachnyk should be the first task. And focus should be on the parliamentary election set for 28 October 2012. Given the growing unpopularity of the government, there is a real opportunity to bring change.

The response to Andrukhovych is encapsulated by the title of Ukraine’s national anthem: Ukraine is not yet dead!

 

A version of this article originally appeared in the Edmonton Journal

An exhibit about inventor James Watt is one of many reminders of our entrepreneurial past housed in the Science Museum

Flames fill the sky under monstrous blooms of smoke. Orange light illuminates the stinking clouds and luridly dramatises the landscape. Philippe de Loutherbourg's 1801 painting Coalbrookdale by Night hangs not in an art gallery but in the Science Museum in London, among steam engines and spinning machines, the blackened iron relics of the first factory age.

Coalbrookdale was the place where smelting with coke instead of charcoal was perfected, a discovery of central importance for iron production that made it an epicentre of the Industrial Revolution. The makers of that revolution were proud of their achievements. The Iron Bridge is Coalbrookdale's monument to its own history, raised in cast iron by Abraham Darby III in 1779.

In fact, the makers of a new age in late 18th- and early 19th-century Britain were deeply conscious of their importance, and used art to communicate their pride. Loutherbourg's painting may look to us like a vision of hell but in its day, which was also Goethe's day, it must have seemed an image of human potential worthy of the great German's hero Faust. The fires of the smelting furnace were as stirring as the contemporary music of Beethoven. Exactly like Faust, the industrialist Matthew Boulton declared: "I sell here, sir, what all the world desires to have – power."

Boulton's bold words are currently on display in a fascinating free exhibition at the Science Museum about his business partner James Watt. It was Watt's improvements to the steam engine that made him the definitive inventor of the Romantic age, celebrated in his time and ever since as the British engineering mind par excellence. It is great that he has a proper display at the Science Museum, because the early steam engines installed like iron-clad beetles in its entrance hall can sometimes look forlorn, forgotten by a technological age more concerned with bytes than units of horsepower. It is hard to realise these old water tanks and pistons are the objects that created the world as we know it.

The Watt exhibit contextualises these titans and also reveals him as the first industrial archaeologist. Watt himself collected steam engines that had fallen derelict, realising they were relics of historical importance. Just as the iron-makers of Coalbrookdale marked their achievement with a bridge that symbolised a new age, Watt recognised that abandoned machines should be treasured as icons – as works of art, even.

Put all these images together – Romantic paintings of industry, monuments to engineering, curators of the machine – and it is clear that British culture 200 years ago worshipped invention and discovery. Today, government ministers wring their hands over the need for an entrepreneurial culture. Invention was once the British art. Engineers were heroes, and they knew it. They made an offshore island the workshop of the world. Can those fires ever be lit again?

When an incumbent US President comes to your country, you can take it that your significance is well and truly recognised (at least to America). It might further suggest that the US, currently in dire economic straits, is, having been usurped as your number one trading partner, trying to woo you back. Brazil has arrived.Barack Obama paid a controversial visit here last month, as part of a brief Latin American tour. In a gushing speech in Rio de Janeiro, he opened in that classic politician´s ingratiating style. Compliments and humour were followed by appeal to commonalities between the histories of the US and Brazil: both lands of “ancient, indigenous peoples” (not mentioning how America pushed its to the margins); both home to immigrant populations; and a shared pride in having banished slavery. And, being in a pious country, Obama invoked a bit of God: “Our lands are rich with God´s creation.” (Like God drew the political borders.) I wonder, now that he has declared his intention to run again, in what will be a difficult fight against a resurgent religious right, that Obama will talk more God than before. After all, you can´t get (re)elected to high office in the USA without it.Obama is certainly popular here – his election improved the US´s opinion rating in Latin America. But his visit has been heavily criticised, with his judgement under question for going ahead just as he authorised the military campaign in Libya (without Brazil´s support at the UN Security Council). However, Obama feels a pressing need to promote American exports and trade with Brazil – now the seventh largest economy in the world and an increasingly influential economic and diplomatic player. Thus, courting Brazil is very important right now. And opportune, in that its new president, Dilma Rousseff, is distancing Brazil from the US-displeasing alliances of her predecessor, Lula da Silva: namely, Iran and Venezuela, the latter a valuable trading partner. This hitherto US-defiant stance has hindered Brazil´s desired permanence on the UN Security Council, which Obama did not endorse.Without explicitly naming them, Obama cocked a snook or three at Brazil´s recent association with /support for these other countries by repeatedly emphasising democracy and freedom – working hard to convince Brazil that, having quenched its dictatorship past, it has more in common with the US. In fact, he said “democratic/democracy” twelve times, and “free/freedom” nine. Encouraging Brazil to work together with America, he re-called his campaign slogan – “I´m confident we can do it.”In case you´re unaware, here´s a flavour of why Brazil is so important. Only a few decades ago, it was a net importer – a big problem for a vast country with a burgeoning population (now over 200 million). But after a staggering (scientifically-informed) agricultural transformation, Brazil is now a net exporter: the world´s largest of beef, poultry, sugar cane, ethanol, orange juice, and (of course) coffee. It also has the world´s second largest reserves of iron ore, and is not far behind the US dominance of the soybean export market, having bred tropical-tolerant varieties. Brazil is also the world´s second largest user of GM technology, after the USA. And it doesn´t stop there. Brazil has more available farmable land (as much as Russia and America combined), coincident with more available water (as much as the whole of Asia, but with one-twentieth the population) than anywhere else. Notably, this will not entail further destruction of the Amazon, where deforestation has declined. This agricultural revolution has been mainly achieved through rendering farmable the vast Cerradu savannah, which covers about one-fifth of Brazil. Such resources – and the scientific base which has informed their exploitation – will likely see Brazil become an even more significant global agricultural force, as world population continues to soar. Brazil has also been energy self-sufficient for years, with exports exceeding imports. Its copious water is utilised for the hydro-electric power that supplies 9/10ths of Brazil´s population. Brazil is also a leader of renewable fuel technology. 40% of Brazil´s fuel is ethanol, produced from abundant sugar cane. Nine out of ten new cars in Brazil are ´flex-fuel´capable: ie, they can run on 100% ethanol, or petroleum-ethanol blends. The less efficiently converted ethanol source, corn, yields only 10% of the US fuel supply. And now, Brazil has deep sea oil reserves, estimated at 15 billion barrels, 140 miles off the Rio coast. Despite America´s commitment to cleaner fuel, it is still sniffing after oil that Brazil, in effect, doesn´t need. However, this is not limitless: the biodiversity-rich Cerradu, home to 5% of the world´s species, and an important carbon sink, is now 50% devastated. And Brazil is coming under UN pressure to preserve what is left (what was that about a permanent seat on the Security Council…?). However, as cities grow (because it is in the cities where most meat is consumed), Brazil´s protein-rich, Cerradu-grown soy is in demand as feed for factory-farmed animals. One-third of Brazil´s soy goes to the EU. But China wants it too – along with the iron ore.Much to the US´s chagrin, China is now Brazil´s biggest trading partner and foreign investor. In order, presumably, to freight this stuff across country to the ports, China is to invest billions in developing Brazil´s inadequate transport infrastructure. Which will come in very handy, with Brazil set to host both the next World Cup in 2014, and the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio. Maybe Obama was also, besides having a subtle dig at his hosts for not backing the Libya action, taking a swipe elsewhere. “We´ve seen the people of Libya take a courageous stand against a regime determined to brutalise its own citizens.” Hmmm, what is that reminiscent of? The message: “You don´t want to do business with them; you´d be much better off with us.” Brazil´s growing middle-class (swelled by over 30 million in the last decade), having tasted the good life, is going to want it maintained. Last week, President Rousseff was in China, closing a lucrative aircraft deal. -—————————————————————— Sources:http://ironicsurrealism.blogivists.com/2011/03/20/transcript-obama-speech-rio-de-janeiro-brazil-march-20-2011/http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/world/americas/21brazil.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/WashingtonPost/Content/Epaper/2011-03-21/Ax8.pdfhttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704433904576212904240765000.htmlhttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704608504576208691881359896.htmlhttp://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/20/world/la-fg-obama-trip-20110321http://articles.boston.com/2011-03-21/business/29351790_1_dilma-rousseff-michelle-obama-president-obamahttp://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/mar/20/brazilian-oil-fuels-debate-on-us-policy/http://www.economist.com/node/16886442http://www.economist.com/node/16889019http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/11/meat-industry-foodhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13045546

Music listings are compiled by Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it's a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 20

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bridge, Big Light, Real Nasty Slim's. 8pm, $13.

Cypress Hill Warfield. 8pm, $45.

Dengue Fever, Maus Haus, DJ Felina Fillmore. 8pm, $22.50.

Fucking Buckaroos, Clepto, Mano Cherga Band El Rio. 9pm, $5.

Grand Lodge 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Gregory Alan Isakov, Fairchildren Café Du Nord. 8:30pm, $14.

Janet Jackson Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, 99 Grove, SF; www.tickemaster.com. 8pm, $49.50-149.50.

Limousines, K.Flay, Young Digerati, Shitty DJ Independent. 8pm, $15.

Angie Mattson, Beth Waters Hotel Utah. 8pm, $8.

Movits!, Planet Booty, Coppe with Deghouls Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Radiators Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $30.

Thralls, Night Surgeon, Bad Bibles Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Artofficial, Hot Pocket, Seneca, DJ A-Train Elbo Room. 9pm, $8.

"Jah Summit Live" Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF; www.jahsummit.eventbrite.com. 9pm, $7.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Lynda Carter Rrazz Room. 8pm, $45-55.

Cosmo Alleycats Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo, SF; www.lecolonialsf.com. 7pm.

Dink Dink Dink, Gaucho, Michael Abraham Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Larry Jazz Band Showroom, 1000 Van Ness, SF; www.theshowroomsf.com. 7pm, $10.

Ben Marcato and the Mondo Combo Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

Michael Parsons Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro, SF; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita Moore hosts this dance party, featuring DJ Robot Hustle.

Cannonball Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. Rock, indie, and nu-disco with DJ White Mike.

Jam Fresh Wednesdays Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; (415) 433-8585. 9:30pm, free. With DJs Slick D, Chris Clouse, Rich Era, Don Lynch, and more spinning top40, mashups, hip hop, and remixes.

Mary-Go-Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 10pm, $5. A weekly drag show with hosts Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Suppositori Spelling.

No Room For Squares Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 6-10pm, free. DJ Afrodite Shake spins jazz for happy hour.

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Daddy Rolo, Young Fyah, Irie Dole, I-Vier, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

Synchronize Il Pirata, 2007 16th St, SF; (415) 626-2626. 10pm, free. Psychedelic dance music with DJs Helios, Gatto Matto, Psy Lotus, Intergalactoid, and guests.

Third Wednesdays Underground SF. 10pm-2am, $3. With Ms. Jackson, DJ Loryn, and Becky Knox spinning electro, tech, house, and breaks.

THURSDAY 21

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Nicholas Burke, Infantree, Hugo, Damato Hotel Utah. 8pm, $8.

Crackerjack Highway 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Harderships, Mammatus Knockout. 9:30pm.

Marchfourth Marching Band Independent. 8pm, $18.

Mimosa, Paper Diamond Dillmore. 8pm, $22.50.

Off!, Culture Kids, Ecoli Eagle Tavern. 9pm.

Valerie Orth, Stringer Belle, Audiafauna Café Du Nord. 9pm, $10.

Ty Segall, Royal Baths, TRMRS, Nick Waterhouse and the Tarots Bottom of the Hill. 8:30pm, $8.

Sparrows Gate, SentiMentals, Toshio Hirano Amnesia. 9pm, $7.

Subhumans, M.D.C., Vacuum Thee Parkside. 8:30pm, $12.

System and Station, Gold Medalists, Sprains Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Young the Giant, Man in Space, Strange Birds Slim's. 9pm, $14.

Zeds Dead Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $20.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Lynda Carter Rrazz Room. 8pm, $45-55.

Collective Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Dime Store Dandy Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 9pm, free.

Organsm featuring Jim Gunderson and "Tender" Tim Shea Bollyhood Café. 6:30-9pm, free.

Stompy Jones Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Country Casanovas Atlas Café. 8-10pm, free.

Jessica Fichot Red Poppy Art House. 7pm, $12-15.

"Twang! Honky Tonk" Fiddler's Green, 1330 Columbus, SF; www.twanghonkytonk.com. 5pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz spin Afrobeat, tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Base Vessel. 10pm, $10. With Three and Greg Eversoul.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Club Jammies Edinburgh Castle. 10pm, free. DJs EBERrad and White Mice spinning reggae, punk, dub, and post punk.

Culture Corner Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; www.kokococktails.com. 10pm, free. Roots reggae, dub, rocksteady, and classic dancehall with DJ Tomas, Yusuke, Vinnie Esparza, and Basshaka and ILWF.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

80s Night Cat Club. 9pm, $6 (free before 9:30pm). Two dance floors bumpin' with the best of 80s mainstream and underground with Dangerous Dan, Skip, Low Life, and guests. This week, celebrate Robert Smith's birthday with a Cure-themed night.

Guilty Pleasures Gestalt, 3159 16th St, SF; (415) 560-0137. 9:30pm, free. DJ TophZilla, Rob Metal, DJ Stef, and Disco-D spin punk, metal, electro-funk, and 80s.

Jivin' Dirty Disco Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 8pm, free. With DJs spinning disco, funk, and classics.

Mestiza Bollywood Café, 3376 19th St, SF; (415) 970-0362. 10pm, free. Showcasing progressive Latin and global beats with DJ Juan Data.

Monsoon Season El Rio. 9pm, free. World beats with DJ ExEss.

Nightvision Harlot, 46 Minna, SF; (415) 777-1077. 9:30pm, $10. DJs Danny Daze, Franky Boissy, and more spinning house, electro, hip hop, funk, and more.

1984 Mighty. 9pm, $2. The long-running New Wave and 80s party has a new venue, featuring video DJs Mark Andrus, Don Lynch, and celebrity guests.

Peaches Skylark, 10pm, free. With an all female DJ line up featuring Deeandroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, and Umami spinning hip hop.

Thursday Special Tralala Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 5pm, free. Downtempo, hip-hop, and freestyle beats by Dr. Musco and Unbroken Circle MCs.

FRIDAY 22

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Amon Amarth Regency Ballroom. 9pm, $25.

Lynda Carter Rrazz Room. 8pm, $45-55.

Diego's Umbrella, Vagabond Opera, Mark Growden Independent. 9pm, $15.

Disastroid, Here, Fondue El Rio. 9pm, $8.

Endoxi, Bob Hill Band Union Room (above Biscuits and Blues). 8:30pm, $10.

Glen Fajardo and Eddie Cohn 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Lost in the Trees, Sean Rowe Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $10.

Mustache Harbor Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $15.

Randy Newman Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $25-45.

Radio Moscow, Hot Lunch Thee Parkside. 9pm, $10.

"Sugar Rush: A Fundraiser Concert for the American Diabetes Association" Rasselas Jazz. 9pm, $10-20. With Jay Trainer Band, Ziva, Peggle Theory, For the Broken, and more.

Kurt Vile and the Violators, RTX, Carletta Sue Kay Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $14.

"Yard Concert Fundraiser 2011" Dolores Park Café, 501 Dolores, SF; www.doloresparkcafe.com. 7pm, $20. With Audrey Howard, Laura Zucker, True Margit, Shelley Doty, Groovy Judy, and Sistas in the Pit.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

Les Carnegie and the Jazz Vanguards Condor, 300 Columbus, SF; www.condorsf.com. 3pm.

Ensemble Mik Nawooj Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $10-15.

Wobbly, Ensemble Economonique, Thomas Carnacki Lab, 2948 16th St, SF; www.thelab.org. 8pm.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Baxtalo Drom Amnesia. 9pm, $7-10.

Harvey Diller Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 9pm, free.

Lagos Roots AfroBeat Ensemble, DJ Jeremiah Elbo Room. 10pm, $13.

Yonder Mountain String Band Fillmore. 9pm, $25.

DANCE CLUBS

Afro Bao Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs including Stepwise, Steve, Claude, Santero, and Elembe.

DJ Mei Lwun Medjool, 2522 Mission, SF; www.medjoolsf.com. 10:30pm, free.

Duniya Dancehall Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF; (415) 920-0577. 10pm, $10. With live performances by Duniya Drum and Dance Co. and DJs dub Snakr and Juan Data spinning bhangra, bollywood, dancehall, African, and more.

Exhale, Fridays Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island, SF; (415) 465-2129. 5pm, $5. Happy hour with art, fine food, and music with Vin Sol, King Most, DJ Centipede, and Shane King.

Fubar Fridays Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5. With DJs spinning retro mashup remixes.

Good Life Fridays Apartment 24, 440 Broadway, SF; (415) 989-3434. 10pm, $10. With DJ Brian spinning hip hop, mashups, and top 40.

Hot Chocolate Milk. 9pm, $5. With DJs Big Fat Frog, Chardmo, DuseRock, and more spinning old and new school funk.

Hubba Hubba Revue: The San Francisco Show DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-15. Barbary Coast-themed burlesque.

PANTyRAID, LowRIZERz 103 Harriet, 1015 Folsom, SF; www.1015.com. 10pm, $25.

Psychedelic Radio Club Six. 9pm, $7. With DJs Kial, Tom No Thing, Megalodon, and Zapruderpedro spinning dubstep, reggae, and electro.

Rockabilly Fridays Jay N Bee Club, 2736 20th St, SF; (415) 824-4190. 9pm, free. With DJs Rockin' Raul, Oakie Oran, Sergio Iglesias, and Tanoa "Samoa Boy" spinning 50s and 60s Doo Wop, Rockabilly, Bop, Jive, and more.

Some Thing Stud. 10pm, $7. VivvyAnne Forevermore, Glamamore, and DJ Down-E give you fierce drag shows and afterhours dancing.

Soul Rebel Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; www.kokococktails.com. 10pm, free. Reggae, punk, 2tone, oi, and more with Dougie, Tim, and Tomas.

Vintage Orson, 508 Fourth St, SF; (415) 777-1508. 5:30-11pm, free. DJ TophOne and guest spin jazzy beats for cocktalians.

SATURDAY 23

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine, Restarts, Dreadful Children, Bum City Saints Thee Parkside. 2:30pm, $10-12.

Eddie Cohn, Joyce Todd McBride and friends, Mindi Hadan, Con Brio Amnesia. 8pm, $7-10.

Foreverland, Sex With No Hands Bimbo's 365 Club. 9pm, $22.

Daryl Hance Brick and Mortar Music Hall, 1710 Mission, SF; www.brickandmortarmusic.com.

"Lyrics Born presents Continuum" Yoshi's San Francisco. 10:30pm, $26. With full live band and special guests.

Silly Pink Bunnies! Thee Parkside. 7pm, free.

Spectrum, Spyrals Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $15.

Two Gallants Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $15.

"UK Reunion Tour" Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $65-99. Featuring Eddie Jobson and John Wetton.

Yoni Wolf, Moore Brothers, Becky Wolf and Amy Miller Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café Du Nord). 8pm, $15.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Erin Brazill 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Garage a Trois, Amendola vs. Blades Independent. 9pm, $20.

Buddy Guy, John Németh Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $20-65.

Nucleus Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Back49 Riptide Tavern. 9:45pm, free.

Lady A and the Heel Draggers, Misisipi Mike and the Midnight Gamblers, West Nile Ramblers, Bootcuts, DJ Blaze Orange Café Du Nord. 8:30pm, $13.

Quijeremá Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $12-15.

"Sounds and Rhythms of Afghanistan" Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; (415) 621-6600. 8pm, $25-75.

Craig Ventresco and Meredith Axelrod Atlas Café. 4pm, free.

Yonder Mountain String Band Fillmore. 9pm, $25.

DANCE CLUBS

Afro Bao Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs including Stepwise, Steve, Claude, Santero, and Elembe.

Barracuda 111 Minna. 9pm, $10. Eclectic 80s music with DJs Damon and Phillie Ocean plus 80s cult video projections, a laser light show, prom balloons, and 80s inspired fashion.

Bootie SF: DJ Tripp's Birthday DNA Lounge. 9pm, $8-15. Mash-ups with DJ Tripp, David X, Mykill, and more.

Debaser Knockout. 9pm, $5. DJ Jamie Jams, EmDee, and Stab Master Arson spin 90s hip-hop jams.

DJ Clee Medjool, 2522 Mission, SF; www.medjoolsf.com. 10:30pm, free.

Fog and Laser Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $7. DJs EmDee and RamblinWorker host this anything-goes, genre-free dance party.

4OneFunktion Elbo Room. 10pm, $5-10. Starship 27 Vol. 2 release party with guest performers Diabase, J-1, the 4OneFunktion All-Stars, and more.

Go Bang! Deco Lounge, 501 Larkin, SF; www.decosf.com. 9pm, $5. Atomic dancefloor disco action with Nicky B, Derrick Love, and more.

Mango El Rio. 3-8:30pm, $8-10. Sweet, sexy fun for women with DJs Edaj, Marcella, Olga, and La Coqui.

Reggae Gold Club Six. 9pm, $15. With DJs Daddy Rolo, Polo Mo'qz, Tesfa, Serg, and Fuze spinning dancehall and reggae.

Rock City Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5 after 10pm. With DJs spinning party rock.

Spirit Fingers Sessions 330 Ritch. 9pm, free. With DJ Morse Code and live guest performances.

SUNDAY 24

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

"Aftermath: A Citizen to Citizen Tsunami Rescue and Relief Benefit" Thee Parkside. 8pm, $7-10. With Ass Baboons of Venus, Thunders, Tiger Honey Pot, and DJs Nako, Korri, and Lil Joe.

Alter Bridge, Black Stone Cherry, Like A Storm Regency Ballroom. 8pm, $28.

Eastern Conference Champs, Red Cortez, Apopka Darkroom Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $8.

"It Gets Indie: A Benefit for It Gets Better and the Trevor Project" Great American Music Hall. 7:30pm, $25. With Rabbit! and Handshakes.

"JAMband Family Festival" Park Chalet, 1000 Great Hwy, SF; www.jamjamjam.com. 11am, free. With Charity Kahn.

Tower of Dudes, Graves Brothers Deluxe, Tunnel Make-Out Room. 8pm, $7.

Two Gallants Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $15.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Tom Lander Duo Medjool, 2522 Mission, SF; www.medjoolsf.com. 6-9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Family Folk Explosion Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Louis Romero and Mazacote El Rio. 5-8pm, $8.

Tater Famine Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Batcave Cat Club. 10pm, $5. Death rock, goth, and post-punk with Steeplerot Necromos and c_death.

Branded James Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $5. Benefit for Back to Business career workshops.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJ Sep, Ludachris, and guest Janaka Selekta.

Gloss Sundays Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 7pm. With DJ Hawthorne spinning house, funk, soul, retro, and disco.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. "Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers." Got that?

La Pachanga Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF; www.thebluemacawsf.com. 6pm, $10. Salsa dance party with live Afro-Cuban salsa bands.

MONDAY 25

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Travis Barker and Mix Master Mike Independent. 9pm, $30-50.

Mad Rad, Mash Hall, Toast Elbo Room. 9pm, $10.

Paul Simon Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF; www.ticketmaster.com. 8pm, $65-125.

DANCE CLUBS

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Gothic, industrial, and synthpop with Joe Radio, Decay, and Melting Girl.

Krazy Mondays Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. With DJs Ant-1, $ir-Tipp, Ruby Red I, Lo, and Gelo spinning hip hop.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With DJ Gordo Cabeza and guests playing all Motown every Monday.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl, SF; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

Sausage Party Rosamunde Sausage Grill, 2832 Mission, SF; (415) 970-9015. 6:30-9:30pm, free. DJ Dandy Dixon spins vintage rock, R&B, global beats, funk, and disco at this happy hour sausage-shack gig.

Skylarking Skylark. 10pm, free. With resident DJs I & I Vibration, Beatnok, and Mr. Lucky and weekly guest DJs.

TUESDAY 26

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Civil War Rust, Cut Downs, Sheens Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Jamaica, Chain Gang of 1974 Independent. 8pm, $15.

Outlaws and Preachers, Ghost Town Refugees John Colins, 138 Minna, SF; www.johncolins.com. 9pm, $5.

Ash Reiter, Radiation City, Phantom Kicks Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Sugarspun, Silver Threads El Rio. 7pm, free.

tUnE-yArDs, Buke and Gass, Man/Miracle

Whiskey Avengers, Franco Nero, DJ Ras Fank Elbo Room. 9pm, $5.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Quiet Echos Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.

Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house.

 

Filled-in guns represent overall threat level. 

Plentiful new release slate led by puzzle, fighting, and shooting games; Conduit 2, Xbox Live Arcade Triple Pack, Final Fantasy IV: Complete Collection also out.

 

It's a busy week at retail, as a slew of high profile new releases make their debut on Tuesday including Valve's long-awaited puzzle game and Warner Bros.' fighter reboot.

Leading the pack this week is Valve Software's Portal 2. The game follows the events of the first Portal, which saw gamers taking on the role of a human lab rat, Chell, who used a portal gun to create interdimensional openings on ceilings, walls, and floors in an effort to escape the Aperture Science labs. Along the way, players were guided through the diabolical tests by the deceptively sincere, yet altogether sadistic, artificial intelligence known as GLaDOS.

The game will feature a single-player campaign billed as being twice as long as the original's, but the real focus is on the new multiplayer cooperative mode. The co-op mode will tell a parallel story to the single-player adventure and last roughly as long. In it, players will take control of two robots, named simply Blue and Orange, and work together to tackle their own set of portal-related problems.

Also debuting this Tuesday will be NetherRealm's gruesome fighter reboot Mortal Kombat. The game's roster will be a throwback of sorts, full of fighters pulled from the first three games in the series. There is one particularly notable exception, as the PlayStation 3 version will feature God of War protagonist Kratos as a playable character.

Gamers looking to pick up a new contemporary shooter can grab SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy SEALs this week for the PlayStation 3. The game is set in Southeast Asia after a revolution endangers a vital shipping lane similar to the Strait of Malacca. Players assume the role of the commander of a five-man squad of NATO commandos dispatched to prevent international trade from being disrupted. Their mission will only last six days, a time limit that Sony says will add urgency into the campaign.

As is a staple for the series, SOCOM 4 will have an extensive multiplayer component, allowing for teams of players to shoot it out in 32-player matches. Terrain types will include a hostile jungle and half-ruined cities.

Wii owners wishing to continue their effort through the Conduit universe can grab the often delayed Conduit 2 this week. The single-player mode of Conduit 2 will pick up the original game's alien invasion storyline, with Sega promising dynamic environments, player customization options, and giant boss enemies. As for multiplayer, Sega will introduce new co-op modes for online play, or offline with up to four players sharing a split-screen. The publisher is also promising "increased multiplayer security" for the game, in light of the cheating that undermined the online play of the original game.

On-the-go Final Fantasy fans can pick up Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection on Tuesday. This set includes Final Fantasy IV--with revamped visuals to take advantage of the PSP's widescreen format--as well as its epilogue, Final Fantasy IV: The After Years. The episodic series of downloadable titles was originally released in 2009 on the Wii; this will mark the first time it has been available as part of a retail product.

Gamers looking to bundle up this week can pick up the Xbox Live Arcade Triple Pack, which contains Limbo, Trials HD, and Splosion Man, as well as 160 MS points, and a 48-hour Xbox Live Gold card.

Another bundle out this week is the Prince of Persia Classic Trilogy Pack HD for the PS3, which includes Sands of Time, Warrior Within, and Two Thrones.

For further details on the week's games, visit GameSpot's New Releases page. The full list of downloadable games on the PlayStation Store, Xbox Live Marketplace, and Wii Shop Channel will be revealed later this week. Release dates are based on retailer listings and are subject to change.

TUESDAY, APRIL 19
Arcana Heart 3--PS3--Aksys Games
Assassin's Creed: Ultimate Collection--PC--Encore Software Inc.
Brothers in Arms: Complete Collection--PC--Encore Software Inc.
Conduit 2--Wii--Sega
Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection--PSP--Square Enix
Majesty 2 Collection--PC--Paradox Interactive
Mortal Kombat--PS3, X360--Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Portal 2--X360, PS3, PC, Mac--Valve Software
Prince of Persia: Classic Trilogy HD--PS3--Ubisoft
SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy SEALs--PS3--SCEA
Triple Pack: Xbox Live Arcade Compilation--X360--Microsoft Game Studios

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

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On February 25, on the first anniversary of his presidency, Viktor Yanukovych invited his three predecessors to his office to “discuss current issues and the future development of the Ukrainian state”. This brief item of information on the president’s official website was illustrated with a photo of the smiling participants at the meeting—Viktor Yushchenko on the left, Leonid Kravchuk on the right, and Leonid Kuchma across the round-table from the incumbent. None of them, with the exception probably of the host, realized that behind its cheerful façade, the meeting resembled one of those Byzantine banquets that would end with the poisoning, slaughtering, or impaling of the distinguished guests.

When the four post-Soviet Ukrainian presidents met
for a banquet in February, only Yanukovych could have
imagined things would end, in Byzantine fashion, with
the metaphorical poisoning of guest Leonid Kuchma

A month later, one of the participants of the meeting, ex-president Leonid Kuchma, began to understand that metaphor. On March 24, he was summoned for interrogation to the prosecutor’s office, charged with the abuse of power and implicated in the killing of investigative journalist Georgiy Gongadze back in September 2000. In Yanukovych’s Ukraine, where the judiciary is just a part of the executive fully subordinated to the president, and where the Prosecutor General is his bosom buddy (“a member of president’s team,” as he characterized himself proudly in public), hardly anyone believes that the case against Leonid Kuchma was launched without the direct blessing of Yanukovych.

Speculation revolves mostly around the question why Yanukovych has made this dubious step and what consequences may follow. The alleged reasons typically include Yanukovych’s desire to divert public attention from his domestic and international failures, to disprove accusations against his government about selective justice, and to intimidate opponents and mobilize supporters by proving that the president is tough but just.

Journalist Yulia Mostova highlighted another reason why Yanukovych might want to prosecute Kuchma: revenge for the perceived humiliation during the Orange Revolution, when the incumbent refused to use force against the protesters and pass on the office to the president-elect, opting instead for negotiation and compromise that ended up with the repeated second round of the election and Yanukovych’s defeat. If the price of becoming the pick-up successor to Leonid Kuchma was 400 million thanks, as Mostova implies, the reasons for revenge might be even more serious (link in Ukrainian).

Remarkably, not a single expert or commentator expressed the opinion that Yanukovych was driven in his decision by some idealistic desire for justice or the practical need for house-cleaning. In view of all Yanukovych’s other deeds, it is really difficult to sell such a nice story to anyone, either at home or abroad. This does not preclude, however, a smart usage of all these arguments by some people around Yanukovych to persuade him to launch the case against Leonid Kuchma. This might well be in the interests of these people but is hardly in the interests of Yanukovych himself for the following reasons.

First, because the propaganda effect of this step, in terms of positive image-building for Yanukovych, is negligible. No one considers it an act of justice and proof of the equality of all Ukrainian citizens before the law. All the policies of Ukrainian authorities suggest the opposite from all regions and walks of life – every day and every hour.

Second, Kuchma can hardly be sentenced by any court, however “executive” they are in Ukraine, because all the people to whom he may have given a direct order (or “suggestion”) to kill Gongadze, are dead and would not be able to testify. And the records, presumably gathered from the tape recordings by Kuchma’s guard Mykola Melnychenko, even if accepted as evidence (that itself is very problematic), do not contain any direct order to carry out murder.

Third and most important, by initiating the murder case, Yanukovych very unwisely draws public attention to his own conversations with Kuchma recorded by Melnychenko, which are not just deplorable but definitely merit a criminal investigation (intimidation of judges, blackmail, bribery, large-scale corruption, etc). Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin, who mentioned Melnychenko’s records among the possible evidence against Kuchma, has inadvertently opened a Pandora’s box since this very evidence could be used against dozens of Ukrainian officials who discussed a variety of criminal plans with Kuchma. (Almost all are alive and well, and now follow their new master, Yanukovych). There is little surprise that opposition MP Yuri Hrymchak has already submitted an official request to the Prosecutor General demanding an investigation of many more episodes recorded by Melnychenko that testify to criminal conspiracy and activity of other members of Kuchma’s team, including current Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and Yanukovych himself.

And, finally, Yanukovych apparently has created the precedent of prosecuting ex-presidents that may eventually be applied against him (at least as a tool of psychological pressure and possible blackmail) .

So, if the trial does not serve reliably Yanukovych’s personal interests and if the public interests are not, in principle, his concern, the question arises who is most likely to benefit from the dubious special operation and how?

Dr. Andrij Zhalko-Tytarenko, former head of the Ukrainian Space Agency and the former Ukrainian Director of the Science and Technology Center of Ukraine in Kyiv, considers the entire “Melnychenko affair” (“Kuchma-gate”) a provocation of the Russian secret services aimed at establishing full control over Leonid Kuchma. The theory is barely new since many experts have argued that Kuchma had no real reasons to physically destroy Gongadze and that he was merely framed by some powerful and influential enemies seeking to compromise him. The only weak element in this theory is the involvement of the leading Ukrainian police officers, including the late Minister of Interior Yury Kravchenko, in Gongadze’s abduction and killing. None would have dared to play into Russian hands without blessing from above—if not from Kuchma, at least from the minister who may have acted (or pretended to act) on Kuchma’s behalf. He could probably have done so only with a clear perspective to replace Kuchma as president, which seems very unlikely under those circumstances.

Zhalko-Tytarenko hypothesizes that the current re-launch of the Gongadze case is part of the Russian domestic power game. According to his theory, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev may be planning to run for a second term and needs to convince the two-time former president, Vladimir Putin, not to run. “If Kuchma will face murder charges (it is too late for abuse of power charges), he will have no choice but to provide all the names that he certainly knows from Ukrainian secret service reports.” This may hold a certain grain of truth provided that Melnychenko’s records contain, inter alia, some very unpleasant information for Mr. Putin discovered by the Security Services (SBU) about his connections with the notorious Semion Mogilevich and involvement in laundering drug money through the St.-Petersburg company SPAG.

Zhalko-Tytarenko might be right about Medvedev’s sophistication and even ambitions but hardly about his real influence and use of independent resources to launch such a complicated manipulative game. Rather, the Russian element in the story is simpler and more traditional. The Kremlin people in Yanukovych’s team persuaded him to make one more self-defeating step: exactly in the same way they persuaded him to give ministerial posts to Messrs. Yezhel, Tabachnyk, and Khoroshkovsky, to promote the Russian church in Ukraine at the cost of all other denominations, to suppress the Ukrainian language, culture, and identity, to violate and manipulate the constitution; to make a Russian citizen the head of his bodyguards; to detain one of Angela Merkel’s men at Kyiv’s Boryspil airport on the eve of his own official visit to Germany; and to make many more stupid maneuvers that not a single professional politician would ever commit. The goal of the manipulators is clear: to undermine Yanukovych’s authority, to compromise him both domestically and internationally, and to render him another “Lukashenka”, ostracized by the West and completely dependent on Moscow.

Taras Chornovil, Yanukovych’s former insider, defines these people as the “Moscow Quartet”: Serhy Liovochkin, Valery Khoroshkovsky, Dmytro Firtash, and Yury Boyko. All are reportedly involved in murky gas deals with Russia, fully controlled by Putin and Mogilevich as Gazprom’s shadow owners. We can hardly obtain proof of these speculations but we are likely to see the results of this and many more "special operations” carried out by the “Moscow Orchestra” (rather than a humble “quartet”).

The Kuchma murder case will not end in the foreseeable future, but will rather be used to compromise (and probably to blackmail) the entire “elite,” including Yanukovych himself. This might be well a part of the strategy of “directed chaos” that includes also the creation of fake “nationalist” and “extremist” groups, planting bombs (the explosions at apartment blocks in Russia in 1999 that preceded Putin’s election provide a fitting precedent) and many more. Back in 2004, the Moscow “political technologists” tried to implement such a strategy in Ukraine to promote the candidacy of Leonid Kuchma for a third presidential term. The “directed chaos,” however, veered out of their control and resulted in an authentic mass uprising, i.e. the Orange Revolution. Remarkably, one of the leading Moscow “technologists” of that time, Igor Shuvalov, serves today as an “adviser” to Serhy Liovochkin and, at the same time, to the leading Ukrainian TV channel “Inter” owned—inevitably—by SBU chief Valery Khoroshkovsky.

Besides the clear political goal—to strengthen the authoritarian power of a rogue president completely dependent on Moscow—the team may pursue a more practical and palpable goal: to eliminate as many political-cum-economic players as possible from the forthcoming privatization of Ukraine’s last asset, its arable land (the protracted moratorium on its sale is expected to be lifted at the appropriate moment).

In a recent interview (in Ukrainian), Leonid Kravchuk, a former communist apparatchik and perhaps the smartest of all Ukrainian presidents, suggested that: “the system has already gnawed away Yanukovych’s legs and is approaching his belly.” So, he must “either destroy the system or concentrate all power in his hands and become a totalitarian leader”. The latter, Kravchuk believes, is unlikely because Ukrainians would not accept it. He may be right but the problem is that Yanukovych is listening not to Ukraine’s first president, but rather to the Moscow Orchestra.

This article first appeared on David Marples' blog on contemporary Ukrainian politics, here

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Kevlar Kuchma and the bullet of justice

Ukraine: don’t ask who killed Georgiy Gongadze

Ukraine: a tale of two elections

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Ukraine's new regime: the first 200 days

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The Houston Dynamo will wear special white jerseys with purple and green lettering for their Earth Day game April 17 against the New England Revolution. The jerseys will be auctioned off in a special Dynamo Charities auction benefiting Keep Houston Beautiful, with bids accepted at Lloyd’s Register Gate 7 in the northwest corner of Robertson Stadium. The occasion will be the fourth time in team history the Dynamo have not worn the familiar orange jerseys at Robertson Stadium. The Dynamo, jersey sponsor Greenstar Recycling and MLS...

There are 117+ interesting, smart, insightful, talented and otherwise amazing people who will be speaking at #140conf NYC on June 15th / 16th.

REGISTER today for just $100 to attend the two day event. "Early Bird" registration ends on April 29th.

As of April 14th:

AJ Leon (@ajleon) - Chief Maker of Trouble, Pursuit of Everything
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Jeff Hasen (@jeffhasen) - CMO, Hipcricket
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Joanna Belbey (@Belbey) - Co-founder, The BGK Group
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- - -

Review the #140conf NYC Schedule over at: http://nyc.140conf.com/schedule.

Hope to see YOU in New York on June 15th and 16th.

Tags: 140conf, social media, 140 Characters Conference, twitter, Jeff Keni Pulver

<p>Buzznet's beloved piano-pounding phenom Andrew McMahon is headlining a Jack's Mannequin Summer tour that kicks off mid-June. Stoked? He'll also be out co-headlining with Guster beginning August 7th.</p> <p><img src="http://cdn.buzznet.com/assets/imgx/1/4/0/0/2/8/5/1/orig-14002851.jpg" /></p> <p><br />Jack's Mannequin Headlining <br /><br />June 14 - Ventura, CA - Majestic Ventura Theatre<br />June 15 - Sacramento, CA - Ace of Spades<br />June 17 - Colorado Springs, CO - The Black Sheep<br />June 18 - Fort Collins, CO - Aggie Theatre<br />June 20 - Omaha, NE - Sokol Auditorium<br />June 21 - Wichita, KS - The Cotillion<br />June 22 - Des Moines, IA - People's Court<br />June 24 - Sioux Falls, SD - The Vault<br />June 25 - Fargo, ND - The Venue<br />June 26 - Duluth, MN - Clyde Iron Works<br />June 28 - Minneapolis, MN - Weesner Amphitheatre<br />July 1 - Poughkeepsie, NY - The Chance<br />July 2 - Quebec City, QC - Woodstock en Beuce Fest<br />July 5 - Kitchener, ON - Dallas<br />July 6 - Toledo, OH - The OMNI<br />July 8 - Richmond, VA - The National<br />July 9 - Asheville, NC - The Orange Peel<br />July 10 - Wilmington, NC - Greenfield Lake Amphitheatre <br />July 12 - New Orleans, LA - House of Blues<br />July 13 - Little Rock, AR - Revolution Music Room<br />July 15 - Oklahoma City, OK - Diamond Ballroom<br />July 16 - San Antonio, TX - Backstage Live<br /><br />Jack's Mannequin &amp; Guster Co-Headlining <br /><br />Aug 7 - Baltimore, MD - Pier Six Concert Pavilion<br />Aug 8 - New York City, NY - Central Park Summerstage <br />Aug 9 - Asbury Park, NJ - Stone Pony Summerstage<br />Aug 11 - Philadelphia, PA - Festival Pier at Penn's Landing<br />Aug 12 - Boston, MA - Bank of America Pavilion<br />Aug 13 - Canandaigua, NY - CMAC<br />Aug 15 - Vienna, VA - Wolf Trap<br />Aug 16 - Portsmouth, VA - nTELOS Wireless Pavilion<br />Aug 17 - Myrtle Beach, SC - House of Blues<br />Aug 19 - Charlotte, NC - Road Runner Mobile Amphitheatre<br />Aug 20 - Charleston, SC - Patriots Point<br />Aug 21 - Pompano, FL - Pompano Beach Amphitheatre<br />Aug 23 - Tampa, FL - The Ritz Ybor<br />Aug 24 - Atlanta, GA - Chastain Park Ampthitheatre <br />Aug 25 - Knoxville, TN - Bijou Theatre (Jack's Mannequin Only)<br />Aug 26 - Memphis, TN - New Daisy Theatre (Jack's Mannequin Only)<br />Aug 29 - Indianapolis, IN - Lawn at White River<br />Aug 30 - Detroit, MI - The Fillmore<br />Aug 31 - Grand Rapids, MI - Miejer Gardens Amphitheatre<br />Sept 2 - Louisville, KY - Headliners Music Hall (Jack's Mannequin Only)<br />Sept 3 - Highland Park, IL - Ravinia Festival<br />Sept 4 - Columbus, OH - The LC Pavilion</p> <p>Which show are you going to?</p>

<p>Buzznet's beloved piano-pounding phenom Andrew McMahon is headlining a Jack's Mannequin Summer tour that kicks off mid-June. Stoked? He'll also be out co-headlining with Guster beginning August 7th.</p> <p><img src="http://cdn.buzznet.com/assets/imgx/1/4/0/0/2/8/5/1/orig-14002851.jpg" /></p> <p><br />Jack's Mannequin Headlining <br /><br />June 14 - Ventura, CA - Majestic Ventura Theatre<br />June 15 - Sacramento, CA - Ace of Spades<br />June 17 - Colorado Springs, CO - The Black Sheep<br />June 18 - Fort Collins, CO - Aggie Theatre<br />June 20 - Omaha, NE - Sokol Auditorium<br />June 21 - Wichita, KS - The Cotillion<br />June 22 - Des Moines, IA - People's Court<br />June 24 - Sioux Falls, SD - The Vault<br />June 25 - Fargo, ND - The Venue<br />June 26 - Duluth, MN - Clyde Iron Works<br />June 28 - Minneapolis, MN - Weesner Amphitheatre<br />July 1 - Poughkeepsie, NY - The Chance<br />July 2 - Quebec City, QC - Woodstock en Beuce Fest<br />July 5 - Kitchener, ON - Dallas<br />July 6 - Toledo, OH - The OMNI<br />July 8 - Richmond, VA - The National<br />July 9 - Asheville, NC - The Orange Peel<br />July 10 - Wilmington, NC - Greenfield Lake Amphitheatre <br />July 12 - New Orleans, LA - House of Blues<br />July 13 - Little Rock, AR - Revolution Music Room<br />July 15 - Oklahoma City, OK - Diamond Ballroom<br />July 16 - San Antonio, TX - Backstage Live<br /><br />Jack's Mannequin &amp; Guster Co-Headlining <br /><br />Aug 7 - Baltimore, MD - Pier Six Concert Pavilion<br />Aug 8 - New York City, NY - Central Park Summerstage <br />Aug 9 - Asbury Park, NJ - Stone Pony Summerstage<br />Aug 11 - Philadelphia, PA - Festival Pier at Penn's Landing<br />Aug 12 - Boston, MA - Bank of America Pavilion<br />Aug 13 - Canandaigua, NY - CMAC<br />Aug 15 - Vienna, VA - Wolf Trap<br />Aug 16 - Portsmouth, VA - nTELOS Wireless Pavilion<br />Aug 17 - Myrtle Beach, SC - House of Blues<br />Aug 19 - Charlotte, NC - Road Runner Mobile Amphitheatre<br />Aug 20 - Charleston, SC - Patriots Point<br />Aug 21 - Pompano, FL - Pompano Beach Amphitheatre<br />Aug 23 - Tampa, FL - The Ritz Ybor<br />Aug 24 - Atlanta, GA - Chastain Park Ampthitheatre <br />Aug 25 - Knoxville, TN - Bijou Theatre (Jack's Mannequin Only)<br />Aug 26 - Memphis, TN - New Daisy Theatre (Jack's Mannequin Only)<br />Aug 29 - Indianapolis, IN - Lawn at White River<br />Aug 30 - Detroit, MI - The Fillmore<br />Aug 31 - Grand Rapids, MI - Miejer Gardens Amphitheatre<br />Sept 2 - Louisville, KY - Headliners Music Hall (Jack's Mannequin Only)<br />Sept 3 - Highland Park, IL - Ravinia Festival<br />Sept 4 - Columbus, OH - The LC Pavilion</p> <p>Which show are you going to?</p>

M Lynx Qualey considers a nostalgic vision of Sudan

As she wrote Lyrics Alley, now longlisted for the Orange prize, Leila Aboulela could not have known that the era in which she set her novel would resonate so strongly with early 2011. She could not have predicted that a winter revolution in Egypt and protests in north Sudan would echo the 1950s anti-colonial uprisings in those two nations. This new reality clashes with Aboulela's book: her warm, well-crafted story does not echo the present, closed as it is in a world of rosy nostalgia.

Aboulela's third novel was inspired by the life of her paternal uncle, a popular Sudanese poet and lyricist. He becomes Nur in the novel, the "poet of love and hope". One of his love poems is used as an anthem for Sudanese independence, but protests are distant background music here. As with Aboulela's previous books, Lyrics Alley foregrounds romantic love and the search for spirituality and meaning. On these two subjects, Aboulela is deft. The novel follows a core of appealing, flawed characters. The star-crossed lovers are young cousins Nur and Soraya, kept apart not by their families but by a tragic accident. The social rifts and uprisings of the 50s scarcely graze them, as they exist in a static moment where even "progress" seems timeless.

Nur, Soraya and other central characters hold themselves at a remove both from the political aspirations of their countrymen and from the day-to-day lives of most Sudanese. They seem to see Sudan with a foreigner's eye, as "simple and rich, Negro and vibrant". This was a "pungent and sensuous" place "where the potential was as huge and mysterious as the darkness of its nights". The world here glows with a warm nostalgia: the British are sunburned and well-intentioned, colonialism is fair-minded, and characters Sue and Nigel Harrison are good-hearted if a bit naive. We hear that British soldiers are headed to Suez, but not what they might do when they arrive. We hear nothing of southern Sudan or the beginnings of the 1955-72 civil war. In Alexandria, Egyptians have "an impatience with the lingering British army", but this is treated lightly, as if the soldiers were guests who had stayed too long at a dinner party.

It is not just the wealthy who see things this way. No other view is available: not among Nur's poet-friends, nor at Soraya's university. Injustice, ugliness and power relations are absent. Nur's tutor is jailed for a crime he didn't commit but, being a good man, he is released the next morning. In prison, he doesn't find radicals, students, or the impoverished, but instead "archetypal villains".

The clash, where there is one, is between European and Egyptian-inspired "sophistication" and Sudan's traditional "crudeness". This narrative might lead us to believe that the future would take us into a struggle between dresses and robes, those who dine with forks and those who eat with their fingers. We would not expect civil wars, sectarian conflict, corruption, repression or a thirst for freedom.

And yet the things that Aboulela does well, she does very well. The characters are astutely shaded, and their varying relations to Islam are beautifully rendered. The novel's sense of internal timing is excellent, and the prose is smooth and clear. As Nur's poem "Eid Crescent" has it: "Let me narrate the story of two souls / Whose love was struck by the evil eye, / In a twist which Fate had hidden . . ." As a tale of stricken love between two souls, Lyrics Alley is impressive. It is a shame that the novel's gentle, gilded atmosphere prevents it being more.

M Lynx Qualey blogs at Arabic Literature

'Chopin's style changed and I've probably changed my way of playing him. I've had a very long relationship with this music'

The pianist Charles Rosen released his first Chopin recording in 1960. It included one of the late nocturnes, opus 62 no 1, written just a year before the end of Chopin's 10-year relationship with George Sand and three years before his death, aged 39, in 1849. Rosen says he wasn't entirely happy with the recording, but he was even more disappointed with the sleeve note, which described the nocturne as "staggering drunken with the odour of flowers". "I had many thoughts about the piece," he says. "That was not one of them. So I started writing the sleeve notes myself. People liked them and after a while a publisher took me to lunch. Before he even offered me a drink he said he would publish whatever I'd like to write. Eventually it led to many books and articles. But to begin with I wrote just to keep nonsense off my record sleeves."

In the years since, Rosen has built a career as both a front-rank concert pianist and a leading writer about music. As a pianist, his 60-year career has been notable for a vast spread of music that has taken in the core classical and romantic repertoires while also fruitfully engaging with Bach, early 20th-century French music, Martinu, Bartók, the second Viennese school, Boulez and Elliott Carter. As a writer and critic, his range has been equally varied. His first book, The Classical Style, is a standard reference to the study of Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn. He has gone on to write books about Schoenberg and Carter and several about the romantic era that cover writers and thinkers as well as music and musicians. As a longstanding and trenchant contributor to the New York Review of Books, he has further expanded his spheres of influence – most obviously with regard to food and literature – and has shown himself willing to engage in spicy debate.

Talking about his friend Elliott Carter's 100th birthday celebrations in 2008 – compared with whom the 84-year-old Rosen is a stripling – he mentions both the wonder of Carter writing songs for soprano and clarinet on the day itself and his recipe for the beef daube which they ate (don't brown the meat and include some orange peel). The occasional skirmishes he engages in are characterised by an intellectual toughness concealed behind a beguiling lightness of touch. When he and another pianist who is also a fine writer on music, Alfred Brendel, became involved in a spat over Beethoven, Rosen – after some detailed technical discussion of tempo and dynamics – concluded in typical style with reference to books, food and music, citing "the simplicity that Proust's grandmother justly claimed was the way to play a Beethoven sonata, as well as the way to receive visitors and prepare a steak with potatoes."

Next month at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London there is a rare chance to encounter both aspects of his career as Rosen delivers a lecture entitled "The Romantic Revolution" and gives an all-Chopin recital that will include the "staggering drunken" nocturne. Rosen has described Chopin as "one of the most radical musicians of his time" and traces his influence through to Wagner and even Carter. "In London I'll be playing all late works, which are interesting because Chopin's style does change at that time and I've probably changed my way of playing him. And I've had a very long relationship with this music. I left Juilliard when I was 11 years old, and my teacher, a man called Moriz Rosenthal, who was 75 at the time, had studied with a pupil of Chopin and also with Liszt. We did lots of things, but that included playing an awful lot of Chopin."

Rosen was born in New York in 1927. His father was an architect and his mother a part-time actress and pianist. He says he started the piano at four, as "every professional pianist starts when they're four. It's like tightrope walkers. Unless you start when you're four you tend to fall off." By six he was studying at Juilliard before leaving to study with Rosenthal and his wife, Hedwig Kanner.

His father had lost his job during the depression and "things were pretty tough for a while". The family moved from Washington Heights to a house in the then less fashionable Upper West Side, where Rosen still lives. Because money was so short Rosen's parents arranged a contract with the Rosenthals not to pay them for Charles's tuition, but instead to give them 15% of his earnings as a pianist until the age of 21. "As I didn't make my debut in New York until I was 23, it was not a very satisfactory deal. But when I made my first recording I took some money to Hedwig Rosenthal, who was very surprised because she had been teaching me for 13 or 14 years at that stage."

Through the Rosenthals, Rosen was connected to the New York musical scene. He had played at a welcome concert for Bohuslav Martinu when he arrived in America in 1941, and says that by the time he went to Princeton, he knew all the music department socially. "So that made me too proud to take a degree in music, which I thought would be too easy. I sound like a snotty bastard, which I might have been, but I really did know more music as an undergraduate than the postgraduate students." Instead he took a degree in French literature and then a PhD, which he was awarded in 1951, the same year as he made his New York recital debut and released his first recordings, of Haydn and Martinu.

"I suppose I could have stayed on as an academic, but I never intended to do anything but play the piano. The only time I taught was when my playing would only support me for half a year, but I could only get a full-time job. So I taught French at MIT Monday to Wednesday, but Thursday through Sunday I was a pianist. In 1955, after two years there, I got an offer from Columbia artist management and so I resigned. The only academic positions I've held since" – he has held chairs at Chicago, Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and several music schools – "came way after I was earning quite a good living as a pianist."

His second LP was the first complete recording of the Debussy études – "I beat Gieseking by about four months". This, in combination with his French degree, prompted CBS to cast him as a French specialist and they asked him to record Ravel. "I had played Gaspard de la Nuit, but I didn't know any other Ravel, so I quickly learned the Le Tombeau de Couperin, although I don't really like my recording of it. The Gaspard de la Nuit I do quite well, but it is too fast. Michelangeli's tempo is the correct one, but everyone was playing it fast then, so I did too. The great advantage of my recording is that it at least sounds frightening, which it should. My performance is not unmusical and it's not bad, it's just wrong."

And so his career began on the eclectic path it would follow thereafter. He recorded Beethoven and Schubert. There was a Schoenberg and Stravinsky LP. Then a Bartók recording, combined with Liszt. "I did the Don Giovanni Fantasy, which I had heard Josef Hofmann play when I was 13. It was the greatest performance of anything I'd ever heard. I once told Schoenberg about seeing this performance and he told me that Hoffman had left the stage and said 'that is the first time I've played that piece the way it should be played'."

After signing with CBS, Rosen was advised to go to Europe to get some experience. "Which was quite a silly idea for a management. Surely their job was to get me some experience. But I went." It has been a life-long relationship, and he still maintains a "tiny" apartment in Paris. He played a lot of radio concerts, "mostly just music I liked, although occasionally I did play a piece just to get a date. Virgil Thomson had written a terrific review of a recital I'd played in New York and I learned a couple of his études. He was very indignant that I wouldn't play them again."

As he was an American performer, producers wanted some American music. He played some Arthur Berger and Milton Babbitt, "but you needed a big piece and there weren't that many big pieces. People played the Copland variations, but I grew a little tired of them. There was also a sonata by Sam Barber which I couldn't stand. Then I found Carter's piano sonata, which I thought was terrific. It was through that I began to play other contemporary music." Soon afterwards Pierre Boulez, then a conductor at the BBC who also had a CBS contract, asked Rosen to go to London and talk about a Webern recording and to record his own piano music. "So then I got a slightly unmerited reputation for playing contemporary music, very little of which I actually did play apart from Pierre and Elliott's music."

Over the years Rosen has often found himself obliged to defend the modernist project. "Partly because it was the only contemporary music I was really interested in. I never wanted to play anything minimalist, which for me held minimal interest." He says he is aware that modernism can still seem difficult. "I don't remember this, but I was told that I first heard a piece by Debussy when I was five. I'd been brought up on Beethoven and Wagner. And I was furious and apparently said there should be a law against it. But the fact is, the great monuments of modernism are impregnable: The Rite of Spring, Erwartung, Wozzeck.

"There is still a question about how long the modernism of the 1950s is going to last. The problem is that in order to absorb any difficult style you have to hear the pieces several times. That was true of Mozart, most of whose work was considered difficult at the time. It was even worse for Beethoven, then worse again for Wagner. Strauss was worse than Wagner, and then Schoenberg and so on. You really have to hear them well played several times, and there are very few music lovers who've heard a piece by Boulez more than once. That's the fact of it. So will it last? I don't know. Some music doesn't. Monteverdi was completely forgotten for a time. Vivaldi totally wiped out. In the case of Carter, the fact that James Levine and Daniel Barenboim have taken up the music gives it a chance. But we'll see."

After a few years with CBS Rosen was called to a meeting. "They said that I'd recorded Debussy and Ravel, Liszt and Bartók. Then I got a reputation for playing a lot of Beethoven and Chopin and then the modernist work. They said they had no idea how to promote me. I realised my career was all over the place as far as repertoire was concerned, and I would have been happy to specialise, but I didn't see any point unless it was something that would really benefit me. Looking back it would have been nicer if I'd made more money, but I've got by. I still like playing a variety of music just as I still like writing about a variety of music."

After his post-sleeve notes publishers' lunch, there were various contractual vicissitudes before The Classical Style, about how Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven had redefined music, was published in 1971. "At the time I was playing a lot of concerts, so I was playing and thinking a lot about the music. I wrote mainly about the Mozart piano concertos and the Beethoven piano sonatas. I also studied the Haydn quartets and piano trios. I'd recently read an excellent single-volume history of renaissance art and wanted to do something similar for classical music."

The Classical Style won a National Book Award in 1972 and thrust Rosen to the forefront of music criticism and debate, where he has remained ever since. "My first review for the New York Review of Books was of The Harvard Dictionary of Music. The sub-editors headlined it 'A tone-deaf musical dictionary', which I wouldn't have said, but then again I did discover 10 mistakes on page one. Later, when I published a collection of my reviews with the Harvard University Press, I insisted they include it because it contained the best joke I ever made. The indexing was very poor, and I noticed mention of Professor Mendel as 'R Mendel – the R being for Arthur'."

Rosen went on to write a study of Schoenberg under the editorship of Frank Kermode – "he didn't like the end of one of my chapters and asked me to rewrite it. It is much the best thing in the book" – and then a series of books about the art, culture, people and period of the romantic era. Most notable of these is The Romantic Generation (1995), which contains detailed assessments of Chopin and Schumann as well as Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Bellini and Liszt. And to prove there is nothing new under the sun, the book – long before Alex Ross's digital accompaniment to his 20th-century music book, The Rest Is Noise – comes with a CD of Rosen playing many of the pieces he talks about. His most recent book, Music and Sentiment, was published last year. In it he not only attempts to explain how music does what it does, but also charts how the representation of sentiment in music developed from the end of the 18th century to the end of the 20th.

He is currently preoccupied with the paradox that Mozart and Beethoven are not only very unconventional in their genius and musical advances, but are also conventional at the same time. "Any important convention in music is always realised by both Mozart and Beethoven, but they make it sound as if they have invented the convention. This attempt to get rid of conventional formulas has gone on ever since." He says this is part of the problem with modernism. "It goes back to Mozart, who did reinvent parts of the musical language to the shock of his contemporaries. People thought it couldn't go any further. In 1770 Charles Burney went on a trip to Italy and met an opera composer who said music is finished because all the beautiful melodies have been written. When Burney published his diary in the early 1800s, he cleverly wrote in the margin, 'let Haydn and Mozart and Beethoven answer this'.

"The public always demand something original, and then they resent it when they get it. It's true of painting and the novel and poetry, and it's been going on for a long time. The task of the critic is to tell people the way to listen to music so that they get more pleasure out of it through enhanced understanding. Basically, there is no difference between understanding and pleasure. If you listen to a piece of music and it makes sense to you, then you generally like it. I've been so lucky to have had a life devoted to playing music and trying to make sense of it. It has proved remarkably satisfying."

TOUR STARTS APRIL 29 IN PORTLAND; NEW ALBUM OUT LATE SUMMER

Portugal. The Man are hitting the road for a Spring tour set to begin April 29 in Portland, Oregon and ending with an appearance at Bonnaroo. In between, they'll hit Seattle, San Francisco, Denver, Dallas, Columbus, New York, and more. Joining them on the tour are Telekinesis and Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Check out the itinerary below, along with a preview video of a new song off their upcoming album out this Summer.

TOUR DATES
4/29 Portland, OR - Roseland Theatre *
4/30 Seattle, WA - Showbox at the Market *
5/5 Sacramento, CA - Harlow's Night Club ^
5/6 San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore ^
5/7 Anaheim, CA - House of Blues ^
5/8 Scottsdale, AZ - Martini Ranch ^
5/11 Colorado Springs, CO - The Black Sheep ^
5/12 Fort Collins, CO - Aggie Theatre ^
5/13 Denver, CO - Bluebird Theatre ^
5/14 Denver, CO - Bluebird Theatre ^
5/17 Kansas City, MO - The Record Bar ^
5/19 Little Rock, AR - Revolution Music Room ^
5/20 Dallas, TX - Granada Theatre ^
5/21 Houston, TX - Fitzgerald's Upstairs ^
5/22 Gulf Shores, AL - Hangout Music Festival
5/25 Columbus, OH - Outland Live ^
5/26 Cleveland, OH - House of Blues ^
5/27 Toronto, ON - Lee's Palace ^
5/28 Syracuse, NY - Westcott Theatre ^
5/29 Danbury, CT - Festivals Fields at Western CT State University
5/30 Burlington, VT - Higher Ground ^
6/1 Portland, ME - Port City Music Hall ^
6/2 Providence, RI - The Met ^
6/3 New York, NY - Webster Hall ^
6/4 Hunter, NY - Mountain Jam Music Festival
6/7 Millvale, PA - Mr. Small's Theatre #
6/8 Baltimore, MD - Rams Head Live #
6/9 Asheville, NC - The Orange Peel #
6/11 Manchester, TN - Bonnaroo

* w/ Telekinesis
^ w/ Telekinesis, Unknown Mortal Orchestra
# w/ Unknown Mortal Orchestra

Portugal. The Man Tour Dates :: Portugal. The Man News

Nicholson Baker

One Saturday last month I went to Lafayette Park in Washington D.C., across the street from the White House, in order to protest several wars. The squirrels were out doing seasonal things. A tree was balancing big buds on the finger-ends of its curving branches; the brown bud coverings, which looked like gecko skins, were drawing back to reveal inner loaves of meaty magnolial pinkness. A policeman in sunglasses, with a blue and white helmet, sat on a Clydesdale horse, while two tourists, a father and his daughter, gazed into the horse’s eyes. The pale, squinty, early spring perfection of the day made me smile.

The demonstration wasn’t officially supposed to start until noon, but already off in the distance a few hundred people had gathered near a platform festooned with a row of black-and-white Veterans for Peace flags. It was March 19, the eighth anniversary of the shock-and-aweing of Iraq, and there was an air of expectancy: arrests were going to happen that day. I sat down on a bench and watched volunteers setting up loudspeakers. Birds were getting in as much chirping as they could before the human noise began. A woman with an armful of red and black signs passed by. Her signs said:

STOP THESE WARS
EXPOSE THE LIES
FREE BRADLEY MANNING

Jay Marx, head of Proposition One, a nuclear disarmament group, took the microphone. He was wearing a knit hat. “Testing, one, two, three,” Marx said into the microphone. “Testing our patience. Testing, four, five, six, seven, eight years of war. Eight years of lies! And we’re live! This park is live! The Vets for Peace are live in Lafayette Park!” (Cheering.)

Code Pink, a women’s antiwar group, was in charge of the pre-noon proceedings. Jodie Evans, Code Pink’s founder, sang “When we make peace instead of war,” to the tune of “Oh when the saints go marching in.” She had on a black hat and a pink vest. She introduced a retired army colonel, Ann Wright, who had resigned her job at the State Department in 2003 because she couldn’t countenance the invasion of Iraq. “I’ll tell you, when Code Pink’s in the house, you know it!” said Wright, to hollers of approval. She pointed across the street. “And the White House knows it!” Wright told us that she had just gotten back from Afghanistan, where the Obama administration was building a $500 million embassy complex. “It’s going to be the largest embassy in the world—larger than Baghdad,” she said.

As a retired colonel, as a former member of the US State Department, and as a citizen, I say that it is our obligation to raise hell! To raise cain! To get these endless wars stopped, and take care of America!

(Big cheering.)

I hurried off to buy some double-A batteries for my audio recorder and when I got back a group called Songrise was performing a heartbreaking a capella version of John Lennon’s “Imagine.” The crowd was bigger now, about eight hundred people. More police had gathered, too.

Caroline Casey, another patroness of Code Pink, came on the stage to explain, in a strong contralto voice, what it meant to be advocating peace at the time of vernal equinox and lunar perigee. The culture of cataclysmic dominance was going down, Casey told us, and the culture of reverent ingenuity was rising up out of the cracks. She invited us to spiral the best of ourselves forth into what she called “the memosphere.” She also offered a quote from Hafiz, a Persian poet: “The small man builds prisons for everyone he meets, but the wise woman ducks under the moon and tosses keys to the beautiful and rowdy prisoners.” She tossed a figurative key to young Wikileaker Bradley Manning, in solitary confinement in Quantico, as an agent of democracy, and she tossed a second key to President Obama, to help him see the wrong of Manning’s imprisonment. Obama was himself, she said, “a prisoner of empire.”

A group of Code Pinkers arranged themselves in a row and opened seventeen pink umbrellas that spelled “BRING OUR WAR $$ HOME.” The crowd was up to about fifteen hundred people by now. A small but committed group of pro-defense protesters—eight of them by my count—were standing out in the street holding flags. Some of their signs seemed to date from another era: CHE IS DEAD GET OVER IT! (held by a woman in sunglasses), and JANE FONDA TRAITOR (held by a man in a black biker jacket). One woman, wearing a gigantic red hat with a red bow, had a sign that said:

I Stand 4
CODE RED, White & BLUE
NOT Pink & YELLER

I went back nearer the platform to hear some of the Vets for Peace speakers. Mike Ferner, who worked on a Navy hospital ship during the Vietnam War and was the author of Inside the Red Zone: A Veteran for Peace Reports from Iraq, was the master of ceremonies—he was an immediately likeable guy with a thick assymetry of graying hair. He introduced Debra Sweet, director of World Can’t Wait, another antiwar, anti-occupation group that had its beginnings during the Bush era. “We have to take a stand against these immoral, illegitimate wars, and this torture being done in our name,” she said. “I’ll see you in front of the White House!” (Huge cheer.)

Caneisha Mills, who had successfully sued the city of Washington for setting up military-style police checkpoints in poor neighborhoods, said: “The President of the United States, Barack Obama, said that he was going to make a change in the United States. The change that we’ve seen has only been for the worse.” Obama and the government were claiming, falsely, that there was no money for education and health care, Mills argued—and now he was calling for military intervention in Libya, even after Libya announced a ceasefire. “We can see that he only cares about wars of occupation and massive slaughter,” Mills said.

Zach Choate, injured in Iraq, read a Dear Mr. Obama letter, which he then rolled up and put in a pill bottle that had held one of the medications that he’s had to take since the war. “You said you would bring my brothers and sisters home, and they’re still there,” he read. “5,938 of my buddies have died. I’m here today to act peacefully in civil disobedience for my disapproval of these wars.”

I walked around the crowd and took some pictures of a six-foot-long scale model of a Reaper drone. It was painted gray, with wide wings and underwing missiles tipped with red and orange paint, and it was balanced on a pole above our heads. What would daily life be like, it prompted us to ask, if we lived in a country where real drones were flying around high overhead, able to murder by remote control? It would be deeply radicalizing and terrorism-sustaining—obviously.

A woman held a white cloth with lettering on it: “How Many Lives Will You End? How Many Billions Will You Spend? Before You End This Madness?” Meanwhile someone—I missed his name—began talking about the heavy “F.O.G.,” or Forces of Greed, which surrounded us. “President Obama—with his very lovely smile and lovely family, and beautiful rhetoric—sometimes fools people. Now we know that he’s part of the F.O.G. The F.O.G. needs to be lifted.”

A woman shook my hand and said “You are so familiar—have we been arrested together?” I said no, I’d never been arrested.

Ralph Nader was up eventually. He began with some words of sympathy for the victims of the disaster in Japan. Then he said, “General Petraeus said there are fifty al-Qaeda, they estimate, in Afghanistan. Why are we blowing that country apart? Why are we sending our injured and sick home day after day?” Iraq, too—we’d blown that country apart. He quoted a coinage from a recent book called Erasing Iraq: “sociocide.”

Someone near me with yellow dyed hair abruptly turned his back on Nader and said “I’m still pissed off at that son-of-a-bitch about Florida.” Everyone else was clapping, though. How was it, Nader asked, that twenty-five or thirty thousand Taliban fighters, with no air force, no navy, no tanks—armed only with Kalishnikovs and suicide belts and rocket-propelled grenades—were able to resist the most powerful military force in history? “Because,” said Nader, “they have a cause that says ‘Expel the invader.’ Expelling the invader will be forever the cause of anybody in the world who is invaded.”

A duct-taped bucket came around for donations to Vets for Peace, and I stuffed in some money. Then Brian Becker of the Answer Coalition, a socialist group that sponsored some of the biggest peace demonstrations before the Iraq war, tore into the Libyan intervention, which had begun with the launch of a hundred cruise missiles that morning. “We have to learn the lessons that are so crystal clear, as Obama and the Pentagon and France and Britain prepare in the next few hours to start dropping bombs on the people of Libya in the name of democracy,” Becker said. “Let’s know this: Libya is the largest oil producer in Africa, and there’s no possible way that if the US goes into Libya that it’s ever going to come out.” Libya must be the masters of their own destiny, he continued. “We ourselves reject the idea, fed to us once again, that US imperialism, with all of its guns and bombs and missiles, is going to help an oppressed people. The only help we can give to the people of Libya and Egypt and Tunisia and Yemen is to make our own revolution right here!” (Whooping and cheering.)

Watermelon Slim, a craggy country blues singer and Vietnam vet in a camouflage T-shirt, told President Obama to listen up. “Mr. Obama, these wars were George Bush’s wars,” he said. “They are now your wars. I hate to say that, but it’s a fact.” Vietnam vets, Slim said, were now standing at the White House to make known their opposition, just as they’d done back in 1971: “Mr. Obama, you and Mr. Nixon got that in common. We’re paying attention to you. We say, bring our brothers and sisters home, right now!”

Somebody gave me a flyer for the next protest, on April 9th in New York City. Somebody else handed me another flyer, “How is the War Economy Working for You?” It was published by the Veterans for Peace’s Smedley D. Butler Brigade. On it was a quote from Marine Corps General Smedley Butler (1881-1940): “I spent 33 years in the Marines being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers,” Butler wrote. “The general public shoulders the horrible bill in lives, shattered minds, and back-breaking taxes for generations.”

Then Daniel Ellsberg, former Marine Corps company commander and distributor of Vietnam War secrets, was on. He wore a blue blazer and a blue shirt and a sober tie. He was only a few weeks away from his eightieth birthday. He looked great. “Can one person make a difference?” Ellsberg asked. “I would say that without Bradley Manning having released the cables through Wikileaks that inspired the uprising in Tunisia—along with the self-sacrifice of a Tunisian named Muhammad Bouazizi, who burned himself to death in protest against the oppression there—without either of those individuals, Ben Ali, our dictator there, whom we were supporting, would still be there. And Mubarak would still be in Egypt. So one person can make a difference.”

Ellsberg asked us if we knew the names of the two languages of Afghanistan. Almost nobody in the audience knew. “The two languages are Dari—which is eastern Farsi, or Persian—and Pashto,” he said. “In Vietnam, none of us spoke the language, but we knew the language that we didn’t speak—that it was Vietnamese. We’re fighting in a country now where we don’t know the language we don’t know.”

Kings, Ellsberg said, once locked their critics away in dungeons till they were forgotten; the French, he reminded us, referred to these dungeons as oubliettes. Kings also once declared wars without parliamentary approval. Bradley Manning was now in an oubliette at Quantico for revealing America’s war crimes; and the Libyan intervention was, like Korea, an illegal war, waged without congressional approval. President Obama believed that he was in a throne room in the oval office, said Ellsberg, with a crown on his head. It was up to us to knock that crown off. (Wild cheers, including Indian war-cry ululations.)

Ellsberg said: “One of the groups in Tahrir Square, that had been fighting Mubarak for some time, called itself Kafaya, ‘enough.’ We need an ‘enough’ movement: enough to empire, enough to imperial wars, enough to oubliettes.” And he ended with: “This is a good day to get arrested at the White House, and tomorrow at Quantico.” (Mad applause.)

Mike Ferner took the mic. “If you’re planning on getting arrested, if you have any questions, Matt Daloisio is back here behind the stage. Come on up and see Matt.” Once arrested, you had to pay a hundred dollars to be freed, or else you had to appear later in court, Ferner advised. He introduced Chris Hedges, columnist for Truthdig, who said, “If you want to stop terrorism, you must first stop committing acts of terror.” Ferner then gave us guidance on the march. “This is going to be a silent march,” he said. “We need to keep in mind what we’re here for, which is to observe the eighth anniversary of invasion of Iraq. We’re here for a solemn purpose. So let’s be that way, purposeful and thoughtful in our march.” He thanked us for coming and then he said “I’d like to add one personal note to this, which has really been rubbing me raw for some time now.” The people in Afghanistan and Iraq were bearing the brunt of the military aggression, Ferner said, while our cities, our veterans, and our public institutions, were all collateral damage. “Our infrastructure and our public institutions may not be being bombed, but they’re being allowed to slowly rot. And that has got to stop.”

The last speaker was Ryan Endicott, an Iraq marine veteran. He was full of powerful indignation, and he spoke at the top of his lungs. “When we joined the military, we rose our right hand, and we swore to defend the people of this country against all enemies foreign and domestic,” he said. “And the biggest enemies to the people of this country do not live in the sands of Iraq. They do not live in the caves of Afghanistan.” He gestured toward the White House. “They live hundreds of yards away!” (Roar of agreement.)

Endicott said: “We know the realities of these brutal occupations, and we know that these people are not our enemies. The fact is that these wars have cost the American people more than just our lives and our limbs.” The wars had cost trillions of dollars, he cried—trillions that could have gone toward free education and health care, that could have prevented millions from losing their homes, and that could have helped thousands of homeless veterans get off the streets. “And that’s why we’re here today in the streets! The streets that we built! With our sweat, and our tears, and our blood!”

Revolutionary change was possible, Endicott believed: Harvey Milk, Martin Luther King, the people of Tunisia, the people of Egypt, had all made revolutionary change. “We’re going to shut down our workplaces. We’re going to shut down our factories and our schools. And we’re going to tell this government not one more dollar! Not one more bullet! Not one more bomb! Not one more day of US imperialism!” (Cacophony of applause.)

People began arranging their banners and signs and assembling to march. “While everybody is waiting, will you please remove your hats?” said Watermelon Slim. “Except those of us who have chemical gear on.” Then he came to attention. “Present—arms!” He played taps on his harmonica, with a slow mournful vibrato. “We must mourn, we must also show our anger,” he said. “We must also bear this war evenly. Let’s go let them bear some of it, too. Come on.”

Then we marchers set out, led by a World War II vet from the 90th Infantry Division, Third Army. We walked silently around several blocks to the west of the White House (evidently the police didn’t want us to actually circle the White House), and then half an hour later, we massed where we’d begun, in front of the black, sharp-tipped, White House fence.

There were many policemen now: motorcycle cops, park police, horseback police, K-9 police, and sinister-looking SWAT teams in black hats and black uniforms tucked into high black boots. It was a strangely varied festival of police “protection.” They were hauling out segments of a metal crowd-control fence. They locked together the segments, fencing off a large area of public sidewalk and street. (The street, Pennsylvania Avenue, is normally open to public foot traffic and closed to cars.) And then they announced that if you stood on the wrong side of the temporary fence you were going get arrested. The police created, in other words, a potential criminal infraction where there should have been no infraction. For standing on a public sidewalk, in a place where people had strolled undisturbed moments before, you could now be arrested for “disobeying an official order.” I decided that this was ridiculous and that I wanted to be arrested. But after consulting my wallet, I realized that because I’d given forty dollars to Veterans for Peace, I didn’t have enough cash to bail myself out. Next time, I thought.

More than a thousand of us stood against the new barricade, shouting, along with the hoarse-voiced bullhornist, “This is what democracy looks like!” And “Money for jobs and education, Not for Wars and Occupation!” And “Stop these wars! Free Bradley Manning!” And “From Wisconsin to Iraq, stand up, fight back!” And “They say more war, we say no more!” I suddenly felt the rising power of an outraged crowd. It has a different kind of persuasiveness than any verbal argument does. I watched a blind man in a wheelchair, missing several fingers, chanting “US out of the Middle East, No justice no peace.”

A hundred and thirteen protesters were eventually arrested in front of President Obama’s White House that afternoon. (Obama, meanwhile, was down in South America trying to sell F-18 warplanes to Brazil.) The arrests took hours. Someone called out “You’re arresting the wrong people! Arrest Bush I, arrest Bush II, arrest Obama!” One of the women, when she was out of sight in the arrest tent, began a series of blood curdling screams of protest. “Let us see what’s happening,” someone called. As a paddy wagon drove off, someone called out “The jello’s no good in the slammer, don’t eat it.”

In the end the SWAT team had to summon two city Metro buses, in addition to the wagons, to carry off the detainees. Both buses carried ads for breakfast at McDonald’s: “Puts the A.M. Back in Amazing.” The police so parked the paddy wagons and the buses that the crowd couldn’t witness the arrests. As a man with a ponytail was pushed into the back of a paddy wagon, a woman in our crowd read from the constitution, the part about how Congress cannot abridge the right of the people “peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” I applauded her. There was no question that the police were denying the public the right of peaceable assembly.

There were cheers when Daniel Ellsberg, forty years after his arraignment for leaking the Pentagon Papers, was led toward the arrest tent. He turned toward the White House, obliging a policemen who wanted to take his picture. His wrists were zip-corded behind his back. He flashed us a double peace sign from his cuffed hands.

When the arrests were all done, one of the cops collected some “Free Bradley Manning” signs and put them in a garbage bag in the trunk of his cruiser.

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Music listings are compiled by Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it's a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 6

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Ani DiFranco Fillmore. 8pm, $33.50.

Fences, Rin Tin Tiger, Passenger and Pilot Rickshaw Stop. 8pm, $10.

Emma Jean Foster and Glide Gospel 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Aaron Glass and friends, Mowgli's, Sufis Elbo Room. 9pm, $8.

A Rocket to the Moon, Valencia, Anarbor, Runner Runner Bottom of the Hill. 7pm, $15.

Spider Heart Submission, 2183 Mission, SF; www.sf-submission.com. 10pm, $5.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Cosmo Alleycats Le Colonial, 20 Cosmo, SF; www.lecolonialsf.com. 7pm.

Dink Dink Dink, Gaucho, Michael Abraham Amnesia. 7pm, free.

Ben Marcato and the Mondo Combo Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

Michael Parsons Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Denise Perrier Rrazz Room. 8pm, $30.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro, SF; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita Moore hosts this dance party, featuring DJ Robot Hustle.

Buena Onda Little Baobab, 3388 19th St., SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. Soul, funk, swing, and rare grooves with residents Dr. Musco and DJB.

Cannonball Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. Rock, indie, and nu-disco with DJ White Mike.

Jam Fresh Wednesdays Vessel, 85 Campton, SF; (415) 433-8585. 9:30pm, free. With DJs Slick D, Chris Clouse, Rich Era, Don Lynch, and more spinning top40, mashups, hip hop, and remixes.

Mary-Go-Round Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 10pm, $5. A weekly drag show with hosts Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Suppositori Spelling.

No Room For Squares Som., 2925 16th St, SF; (415) 558-8521. 6-10pm, free. DJ Afrodite Shake spins jazz for happy hour.

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Daddy Rolo, Young Fyah, Irie Dole, I-Vier, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

Synchronize Il Pirata, 2007 16th St, SF; (415) 626-2626. 10pm, free. Psychedelic dance music with DJs Helios, Gatto Matto, Psy Lotus, Intergalactoid, and guests.

THURSDAY 7

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Dark Star Orchestra Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $35.

Dodos, Reading Rainbow Fillmore. 8pm, $18.50.

Futur Skullz, Blown to Bits, Trouble Kidz, Born Uglies Eagle Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Heavy Metal Kings, Danny Diablo Slim's. 8:30pm, $18.

Hydrophonic, Burn River Burn, Electric Shepherd Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Loto Ball, Moira Scar, Tunnel Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $7.

Peelander-Z, Anamanaguchi, Glowing Stars DNA Lounge. 8pm, $16.

Ron Sexsmith, Caitlin Rose Café Du Nord. 9pm, $16.

"Shock and Roll Therapy" Stud. 8pm, free. With Havarti Party, Poor Sons, Narooma, and Cool Ghouls.

Society 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Sounds, K.Flay, DJ Aaron Axelsen, Miles the DJ Rickshaw Stop. 9pm, $14.

Tycho, Inu, Soma FM DJs Independent. 8pm, $20. SOMA FM 11th anniversary party.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

"Activating the Medium XIV: Radio: Chapter One" San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third St, SF; www.sfmoma.org. 7pm, $10. With Richard Garet and Jim Haynes and Allison Holt.

Raul Midion Yoshi's San Francisco. 8pm, $28.

Organsm featuring Jim Gunderson and "Tender" Tim Shea Bollyhood Café. 6:30-9pm, free.

Stompy Jones Top of the Mark. 7:30pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Bill Monroe Tribute Band Atlas Café. 8-10pm, free.

Chris Milam Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Rafael and Ingrid Red Poppy Art House. 7pm, $12.

"Twang! Honky Tonk" Fiddler's Green, 1330 Columbus, SF; www.twanghonkytonk.com. 5pm.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5. DJs Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz spin Afrobeat, tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Caribbean Connection Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $3. DJ Stevie B and guests spin reggae, soca, zouk, reggaetón, and more.

Club Jammies Edinburgh Castle. 10pm, free. DJs EBERrad and White Mice spinning reggae, punk, dub, and post punk.

Culture Corner Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; www.kokococktails.com. 10pm, free. Roots reggae, dub, rocksteady, and classic dancehall with DJ Tomas' Bunny Wailer and Big Youth Birthday Celebration.

Diapers, Binkies, and Friends Knockout. 9:30pm, free. Dad-to-be Jamie Jams spins baby-themed jams with DJs Stab Master Arson and DJ Eli Glad.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

Electric Feel Lookout, 2600 16th St, SF; www.fringesf.com. 9pm, $2. Indie music video dance party with subOctave and Blondie K, plus guest DJ Candy.

80s Night Cat Club. 9pm, $6 (free before 9:30pm). Two dance floors bumpin' with the best of 80s mainstream and underground with Dangerous Dan, Skip, Low Life, and guests.

Wolfgang Gartner Ruby Skye. 9pm, $25.

Guilty Pleasures Gestalt, 3159 16th St, SF; (415) 560-0137. 9:30pm, free. DJ TophZilla, Rob Metal, DJ Stef, and Disco-D spin punk, metal, electro-funk, and 80s.

Holy Thursday Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Bay Area electronic hip hop producers showcase their cutting edge styles monthly.

Jivin' Dirty Disco Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 8pm, free. With DJs spinning disco, funk, and classics.

Lacquer Beauty Bar. 10pm-2am, free. DJs Mario Muse and Miss Margo bring the electro.

Mestiza Bollywood Café, 3376 19th St, SF; (415) 970-0362. 10pm, free. Showcasing progressive Latin and global beats with DJ Juan Data.

1984 Mighty. 9pm, $2. The long-running New Wave and 80s party has a new venue, featuring video DJs Mark Andrus, Don Lynch, and celebrity guests.

Peaches Skylark, 10pm, free. With an all female DJ line up featuring Deeandroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, and Umami spinning hip hop.

Thursday Special Tralala Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 5pm, free. Downtempo, hip-hop, and freestyle beats by Dr. Musco and Unbroken Circle MCs.

FRIDAY 8

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Bryan Adams Warfield. 9pm, $25-85.

Akron/Family, Delicate Steve, Honeymoon, DJ Britt Govea Independent. 9pm, $15.

Buxter Hoot'n, Devotionals, Nick Jaina Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $10.

Danielson, Battlehooch, Half-handed Cloud Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $13.

Dark Star Orchestra Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $35.

Fiver Brown and the Good Sinners 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Larry Graham and Graham Central Station Yoshi's San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $30-38.

Hillside Fire, Narwhal Brigade, Ayurveda, Sandy Greenfield Band Kimo's. 9pm.

Hot Lunch, Blank Stares, Pre-Legendary and the Dreamers Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Mantles, Wrong Words, Lenz, Wet Illustrated Knockout. 9pm, $7.

Or the Whale, Chamberlin, Steve Taylor Rickshaw Stop. 8:30pm, $12.

Protest the Hero, Maylene and the Sons of Disaster, TesseracT Slim's. 8:30pm, $17.

Volbeat, Damned Things Fillmore. 7pm, $22.50.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

Empty Space Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 9pm, free.

Madeleine Peyroux Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $30-75.

Redshift, Rootstock Community Music Center, 544 Capp, SF; www.sfcmc.org. 8pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

"Cowpokes, Gunslingers, and Outlaw Country" Red Devil Lounge. 9pm, $12. With Good Luck Thrift Store Outfit, Whisky Richards, Tiny Television, and Preservation.

Tito y Su Son De Cuba Quinteto Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $12-15.

DANCE CLUBS

Afro Bao Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs including Stepwise, Steve, Claude, Santero, and Elembe.

Bass Time Continuum Session 4 Club Six. 9pm, $5. With Lotus Drops, Energy Alchemist, Bitch Plz, Benito, and Mr. Rise.

Blow Up DNA Lounge. 10pm, $10-15. "Miss Blow Up USA Pageant" with Jeffrey Paradise.

Cartagena! CD release party  Elbo Room. 10pm, $5. Cumbia with DJs Beto, Vinnie Esparza, and B. Cause.

Deeper 222 Hyde, 222 Hyde, SF; (415) 345-8222. 9pm, $10. With rotating DJs spinning dubstep and techno.

Dirty Rotten Dance Party Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. With DJs Morale, Kap10 Harris, and Shane King spinning electro, bootybass, crunk, swampy breaks, hyphy, rap, and party classics.

Exhale, Fridays Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island, SF; (415) 465-2129. 5pm, $5. Happy hour with art, fine food, and music with Vin Sol, King Most, DJ Centipede, and Shane King.

Fo' Sho! Fridays Madrone Art Bar. 10pm, $5. DJs Kung Fu Chris and Makossa spin rare grooves, soul, funk, and hip-hop classics.

Fubar Fridays Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5. With DJs spinning retro mashup remixes.

Good Life Fridays Apartment 24, 440 Broadway, SF; (415) 989-3434. 10pm, $10. With DJ Brian spinning hip hop, mashups, and top 40.

Hot Chocolate Milk. 9pm, $5. With DJs Big Fat Frog, Chardmo, DuseRock, and more spinning old and new school funk.

Rockabilly Fridays Jay N Bee Club, 2736 20th St, SF; (415) 824-4190. 9pm, free. With DJs Rockin' Raul, Oakie Oran, Sergio Iglesias, and Tanoa "Samoa Boy" spinning 50s and 60s Doo Wop, Rockabilly, Bop, Jive, and more.

Some Thing Stud. 10pm, $7. VivvyAnne Forevermore, Glamamore, and DJ Down-E give you fierce drag shows and afterhours dancing.

Vintage Orson, 508 Fourth St, SF; (415) 777-1508. 5:30-11pm, free. DJ TophOne and guest spin jazzy beats for cocktalians.

SATURDAY 9

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Jeff Beck, Imelda May Fillmore. 8pm, $75.

Danger Babes 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 9pm, free.

Dark Star Orchestra Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $35.

Deskonocidos, Criaturas, Needles, Ruleta Rusa Knockout. 10pm, $7.

Funk Bros Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 9pm, free.

Larry Graham and Graham Central Station Yoshi's San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $38.

Jesse Morris and the Man Cougars Riptide Bar. 9pm, free.

Papercuts, Banjo or Freakout Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $14.

Pollux, Bonnie Dune, Lite Brite Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

Rise Against, Bad Religion, Four Year Strong Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, 99 Grove, SF; www.ticketmaster.com. 7:30pm, $32.50.

Shearing Pinx, Continues, Victory and Associates Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $7.

Submarines, Nik Freitas Slim's. 9pm, $16.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Hypnotist Collectors, Shareef Ali and the Radical Folksonomy, Fancy Dan Band, Slow Motion Cowboys Hotel Utah. 8pm, $8.

Mamacoatl Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $15.

Craig Ventresco and Meredith Axelrod Atlas Café. 4pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Afro Bao Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; (415) 643-3558. 10pm, $5. Afro and world music with rotating DJs including Stepwise, Steve, Claude, Santero, and Elembe.

Bootie SF: Halloween in April DNA Lounge. 9pm, $6-12. Who says Halloween only comes once a year? Mash it up with DJs Adrian and Mysterious D, guest Faroff, and more.

Club Gossip Cat Club. 9pm, $5-8. Pay tribute to Janet Jackson and other 80s ladies at this party guest-hosted by the Bay Area Flash Mob.

New Wave City New Order Tribute Mezzanine. 9pm, $7-12. Celebrate "Blue Monday" on a Saturday with DJ Shindog, guest Andy T, and more.

Rock City Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. 6pm, $5 after 10pm. With DJs spinning party rock.

Same Sex Salsa and Swing Magnet, 4122 18th St, SF; (415) 305-8242. 7pm, free.

Spirit Fingers Sessions 330 Ritch. 9pm, free. With DJ Morse Code and live guest performances.

Spotlight Siberia, 314 11th St, SF; (415) 552-2100. 10pm. With DJs Slowpoke, Double Impact, and Moe1.

Tormenta Tropical Elbo Room. 10pm. Electro cumbia with Chancha Via Circuito, El G, and DJs Shawn Reynaldo and Oro 11.

SUNDAY 10

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Band of Heathens Slim's. 7:30pm, $15.

Let the Night Roar, Pigs Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

G. Love and Special Sauce, Belle Brigade Fillmore. 8pm, $25.

Mark Growden and His Tucson String Band, Conspiracy of Venus Amnesia. 9pm, $10.

John Mellencamp Warfield. 7pm, $49.50-130.

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Now You, Listo Independent. 8pm, $18.

Whiskerman, 7 Orange ABC, Magic Leaves Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

David Wilcox Yoshi's San Francisco. 7pm, $25.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Assad Brothers Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 7pm, $25-60.

John Santos Bliss Bar, 4026 24th St., SF; www.blissbarsf.com. 4:30pm, $10.

Tom Lander Duo Medjool, 2522 Mission, SF; www.medjoolsf.com. 6-9pm, free.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Family Folk Explosion Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:30pm, free.

Jenny Lynn and Her Gone Daddies Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

"San Francisco Festival of the Mandolins" Croatian American Cultural Center, 60 Onondaga, SF; www.croatianamericanweb.org. 10am-5pm, $15.

DANCE CLUBS

Batcave Cat Club. 10pm, $5. Death rock, goth, and post-punk with Steeplerot Necromos and c_death. Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJ Sep, Vinnie Esparza, and guest Adam Twelve.

Gloss Sundays Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 7pm. With DJ Hawthorne spinning house, funk, soul, retro, and disco.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. "Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers." Got that?

La Pachanga Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF; www.thebluemacawsf.com. 6pm, $10. Salsa dance party with live Afro-Cuban salsa bands.

MONDAY 11

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Elephant and Castle, Pixel Memory, Butterfly Bones Elbo Room. 9pm, $5.

Moon Duo, Royal Baths, Lilac Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

Scala and Kolacny Brothers Independent. 8pm, $25.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Broun Fellinis Yoshi's San Francisco. 8pm, $25.

Lavay Smith Orbit Room, 1900 Market, SF; (415) 252-9525. 7-10pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Gothic, industrial, and synthpop with Joe Radio, Decay, and Melting Girl.

Krazy Mondays Beauty Bar. 10pm, free. With DJs Ant-1, $ir-Tipp, Ruby Red I, Lo, and Gelo spinning hip hop.

M.O.M. Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With DJ Gordo Cabeza and guests playing all Motown every Monday.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl, SF; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

Sausage Party Rosamunde Sausage Grill, 2832 Mission, SF; (415) 970-9015. 6:30-9:30pm, free. DJ Dandy Dixon spins vintage rock, R&B, global beats, funk, and disco at this happy hour sausage-shack gig.

Skylarking Skylark. 10pm, free. With resident DJs I & I Vibration, Beatnok, and Mr. Lucky and weekly guest DJs.

TUESDAY 12

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Olof Arnalds Café Du Nord. 9:30pm, $15.

Amee Chapman, Jenny Kerr, Sugarplums Club Waziema, 543 Divisadero, SF; (415) 356-6641. 8pm, free.

Ms. Lauryn Hill Warfield. 8pm, $59.50-90.

Omar Rodriguez Lopez Group, Zachs Marquise Great American Music Hall. 8pm, $21.

Haroula Rose, TD Lind Hotel Utah. 8pm, $8.

Rural Alberta Advantage, Lord Huron, Vandella Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $14.

Scala and Kolacny Brothers Independent. 8pm, $25.

Sydney Ducks, Something Fierce Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

DANCE CLUBS

Boomtown Little Baobab, 3388 19th St, SF; www.bissapbaobab.com. 9pm, free. DJ Mundi spins roots, ragga, dancehall, and more.

Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.

Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house.

 

Another Press Release just in from Orange Amps they have upgraded their new Orange OPC, they got Doug Doppler to co-write the manual and now it is ready to ship!

Fresh from its triumphant demonstration at the CES Show on the INTEL stand, the OPC now features the 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ series i3-2100 CPU (3M Cache, 3.10 GHz). Featuring the very latest Intel technology, the new platform uses less power and has vastly superior integrated graphics and raw power ideal for audio processing. Further improvements announced today include 1 VGA and 2 HDMI interfaces and a precision cut laser aluminium chassis.

The OPC hit the headlines last year when the revolutionary all-in-one hybrid was announced. The first computer of its kind to have built-in high powered speakers, the OPC delivers superb full range studio and authentic vintage guitar sounds. The OPC is designed for musicians and songwriters offering one stop playing, recording, editing and computing capabilities, with premium software pre-installed. The OPC works straight out of the box with no setting up necessary… just plug in, play, record and share!

The OPC comes with well over £700/$1000 of premium software, including the following packages;

IK Multimedia Amplitube 3 including Custom Shop Orange Amps – Amp and Effects Modelling Software

Presonus Studio One Custom Orange Edition - DAW
Acoustica Mixcraft 5 – DAW
Toontracks EZdrummer Lite
Lick Library Player – Guitar learning and jamming centre for included guitar lessons

The OPC retail price is £1020 + VAT (£1224 inc) with free delivery and can be ordered from the new website http://www.orangeopc.com/

The Orange OPC revolution starts here!

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The Independent Booksellers Choice Awards was launched by Melville House a couple months back as a way of giving independent booksellers a chance to promote the books from independent publishers that they most love. It’s a great idea, and who better to run this than the stridently independent Melville House Press?

Anyway, you can read more about the underlying philosophy of the award here, but the real excitement is that the 36-title longlist was announced today. (More exciting: It contains The Museum of Eterna’s Novel (The First Good Novel), which is one of my favorite Open Letter books.)

The complete list is below (kind of in alphabetical order), and any & all indie booksellers can vote for their favorite (Macedonio, natch . . . if you need a review copy e-mail me) by clicking here.

Agaat by Marlene Van Niekerk (Tin House)
Aliss at the Fire by Jon Fosse (Dalkey Archive)
An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris by Geroges Perec (Wakefield Press)
Asunder by Robert Lopez (Dzanc)
Black Minutes by Martin Solares (Grove/Atlantic)
Contingency Plan by David K Wheeler (TS Poetry)
Dolly City by Orly Castel-Bloom (Dalkey)
Firework by Eugene Marten (Tyrant Books)
Flyover State by Emma Straub (Flatmancrooked)
Forecast by Shya Scanlon (Flatmancrooked)
Grand Central Winter: Stories from the Street by Lee Stringer (Seven Stories Press)
Great House by Nicole Krauss (W.W. Norton)
I Just Lately Started Buying Wings by Kim Dana Kupperman (Graywolf Press)
Long, Last, Happy by Barry Hannah (Grove/Atlantic)
Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon (McPherson)
Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes (Grove/Atlantic)
Museum of the Weird by Amelia Gray (FC2)
New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (New Press)
Nox by Anne Carson (New Directions)
Orion You Came and Took All My Marbles by Kira Henehan (Milkweed Editions)
Report by Jessica Francis Kane (Graywolf)
The Autobiography of Jenny X by Lisa Dierbeck (O/R Books)
The Black History of the White House by Clarence Lusane (City Lights)
The Debba by Avner Mandelman (Other Press)
The French Revolution by Matt Stewart (Soft Skull Press)
The Instructions by Adam Levin (McSweeney’s)
The Jokers by Albert Cossery (NYRB)
The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall (W.W. Norton)
The Museum of Eterna’s Novel by Macedonio Fernandez (Open Letter)
The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich (Two Dollar Radio)
The Singer’s Gun by Emily St. John Mandel (Unbridled)
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade Books)
Under the Poppy by Kathe Koja (Small Beer Press)
Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck (New Directions)
Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns (Dorothy)
Wingshooters by Nina Revoyr (Akashic)

Great idea for a prize, and I’m excited to see how this all plays out. It really does depend on what booksellers are most looking for . . . A beautifully produced object like Nox, or something that’s got a decent-sized audience already like The Instructions or Great House.

Voting for the 12-title shortlist is open until April 30th, with voting for the winner taking place from May 1st until the 13th. We’ll post the results as soon as they’re announced.

LAS VEGAS — Miranda Lambert won four prizes at the Academy of Country Music Awards Sunday night but lost the coveted entertainer of the year honor to Taylor Swift in a major surprise.Swift, who had four nominations, had watched from her seat throughout the ceremony as rivals Lambert and Lady Antebellum went up to the stage. She was stunned when her name was finally called for the final prize, a fan-voted honor."This is the first time that I've ever won this and I'm just losing my mind," Swift said as she fought back tears.Lambert retained her crown as top female vocalist, and her wistful tune "The House That Built Me" was honored for single, song, and video of the year at the 46th annual awards ceremony.The award for single goes to the artist and producer, but the trophy for best song is given to the artist and composer.Lambert, a 27-year-old Texan, went into the ceremony with a leading seven nominations, including two in the video category.The country trio Lady Antebellum won trophies for album and vocal group of the year, and Brad Paisley was named top male vocalist for the fifth consecutive year. The award for top new artist went to The Band Perry, a sibling trio from Mississippi.The members of Lady Antebellum celebrated on stage after Lambert, winner of last year's album of the year award for Revolution, announced the winner."Thank you, Miranda Lambert, for winning this last year and not being in the category this year," Lady A's Charles Kelley said.They were named vocal group of the year a few moments later."The House That Built Me," written by Allen Shamblin and Tom Douglas, won song, single record, and video of the year. It mirrors a difficult time in Lambert's life, but those times are over and the song has helped Lambert's star rise to new heights. It helped her win the Grammy for best female country performance and it also won Country Music Association's song of the year award. "Allen and Tom," Lambert said after winning the trophy for single record, "thank you for writing the song of the year."Paisley claimed his fifth straight top male vocalist of the year award."This is way too many for me," Paisley said before joking, "I don't know who got paid what. No, I'm kidding, kidding. It's all very fair."Sugarland won vocal duo of the year for the second time.The Band Perry claimed the best new artist award moments after singing their hit "If I Die Young." It was the trio of two brothers and one sister's second win after taking home top new vocal duo or group before the awards. They were competing with Eric Church for top new artist."We believe that country music is the people's music," Kimberly Perry said. "And it is our greatest desire to be their band."Zac Brown Band, up for five awards, took home vocal event of the year with Alan Jackson for their collaboration on "As She's Walking Away."Paisley kicked off the ACMs with a little help from friends: Three members of the iconic group Alabama joined Paisley on his new song "Old Alabama," bringing the crowd at the MGM Grand to its feet. It was one of several big collaborations during the show. Steven Tyler and Carrie Underwood rocked out to "Undo It" then segued to the Aerosmith classic "Walk This Way," and later, Rihanna, sporting a flaming orange pixie haircut, performed her song "California King Bed" with Sugarland's Jennifer Nettles.The show opened with co-host Blake Shelton singing a slow song to what appeared to Lambert, his fiancee. But as the camera panned in on a blonde draped over a couch, it revealed the show's other co-host, Reba McEntire in a blonde wig."All right, Blake," she said, "that's enough rehearsing for your wedding night. We've got a show to do. Focus!"Lambert was the night's top solo nominee ,with seven. Kenny Chesney, with five nominations, and Keith Urban, with three, went home empty-handed.The announcement of winners took second place to a string of performances divided between two hotel venues, the MGM Grand and Mandalay Bay. The winner of the first award was not revealed until almost an hour into the three-hour ceremony.WINNERSTOP ENTERTAINERTaylor SwiftTOP MALE VOCALISTBrad PaisleyTOP FEMALE VOCALISTMiranda LambertTOP VOCAL DUOSugarlandTOP NEW ARTISTThe Band PerryTOP NEW SOLO VOCALISTEric ChurchTOP VOCAL GROUP Lady AntebellumTOP NEW VOCAL GROUPThe Band PerryALBUM OF THE YEARNeed You Now — Lady AntebellumVIDEO"The House That Built Me" — Miranda LambertVOCAL EVENT"As She's Walking Away" — Zac Brown Band featuring Alan Jackson

Rejoice! Women are staking out their territory in the art world, and about time too

Rejoice! The great wheel of the women's cultural revolution turns again. The Birds Eye View film festival ended in March, as did the inaugural Women of the World festival at the Southbank Centre. The shortlist for the MaxMara art prize for women has been announced, while the exhibition for the last winner, Andrea Büttner, is on at the Whitechapel gallery. Every major UK city is witnessing a revival of women's cultural activism. The Orange prize shortlist is announced soon, and in May the Pangolin gallery launches Women Make Sculpture, featuring 20 contemporary artists. If you want music, catch Ruth Barnes' show The Other Woman on Resonance FM. She's hilarious, knowledgable and plays all the women artists ignored by other radio stations.

This is women's genius, available for everyone, and it makes me happy. I'm tired of counting how many women there are (not) on every roster. I am bored of the man-worshipping, misogynistic excuses of the perpetrators. People who loathe women's events do so because they loathe women and cannot stand to be around them.

The interest Women of the World generated from creators, producers, activists and audiences demonstrates how cravenly the discriminators lie when defending their bias. Women are not too shy, too talentless, too scarce, too petty, too this or that … or not enough of something else. At WOW every room on every floor in every block was full, with events running concurrently across dozens of disciplines and hundreds of debate topics, all day, for three days.

This is not a ghetto; a ghetto is created by oppressors according to their rules. Arts misogynists haven't even bothered to make a ghetto. Instead, they honour as few women as possible. What's happening now is that we are staking out space. This is territory.

Ukraine is facing one of its biggest political scandals since the Orange Revolution, as prosecutors broaden their investigation into the role of Leonid Kuchma in a murder

When I was growing up, most green salads were made from two types of lettuce: iceberg or romaine. Dinner salads consisted of lettuce or perhaps spinach and some tomatoes, radishes, onions, and cucumbers, probably a few croutons on top and Italian dressing (from a dry package mix). Or, for special occasions, a Caesar salad. Then came Alice Waters and the food revolution. Slowly grocery stores started stocking more exotic fare. Now, farmer’s markets and grocery stores are bursting with arugula, mizuna, frisée, escarole, mustard greens, endive, tatsoi, cress, just to name a few. Often these greens are found bagged in a “mesclun” mix for convenience (the word mesclun comes from the French word mesla, to mix). These mixes are expensive and now that I belong to a CSA as well as have my own garden and frequent farmer’s markets, I am able to make a green salad with 4 or 5 different greens very inexpensively and conveniently.

The hundreds of thousands of people who marched through London on Saturday were a powerful testimony to the strength of opposition to the coalition government's cuts agenda. Afterwards, the differences between those involved in parliamentary politics and those involved in direct action could lead both groups to think  'these are the times that try men's souls.' Such tensions are inevitable. The important lesson I think should be drawn is that this must not distract from the pressure on the coalition.

In a useful analysis of the social make-up of the march, the BBC's Paul Mason suggested that many of the marchers will have been former Liberal Democrat supporters. If so it bodes well for Labour's hopes of monopolising the progressive vote in England at the next election.

Yet a strategy based on that prospect risks betraying the passion and urgency of last weekend's demonstrations. Worse, it passively concedes the cohesion of the coalition rather than attempting to undermine it. But only a strategy of dividing the coalition partners offers the hope of successfully resisting the cuts agenda (reversing it is rather more difficult and distant).

The size and energy of the march suggests that there is a much larger public that wants to see the defeat of the coalition's economic strategy. But a defeat of the Coalition requires a forensic analysis that identifies the different elements in its make-up and a nuanced approach to dealing with each of them.

The coalition is the product of two main factors. The first was the raw parliamentary arithmetic that made some form of government primarily dependent on Conservative and Lib Dem votes inevitable. The second, was the balance of forces within each of the partners, which made it possible for a radical government with an ambitious agenda to emerge from such apparently weak foundations, and impose itself as if it was not a coalition, as Eunice Goes argues.

It is well-known that a key aspect of this was the rise of the free market Orange Book tendency within the Liberal Democrats. According to James Crabtree, the Orange Book originated in a meeting of its two co-editors at the Lib Dem conference in 2003:

 

I have seen the evolution of the BOB strollers for the last 10 years. No matter the year, they are always the best stroller on the market! I couldn't be more excited about their newest release of the Stroller Strides Fitness stroller! There are significant enhancements on the 2011 models.

In addition to fresh fabrics that pop with bold new shades, including plum, orange, red, navy, yellow, blue and black, improvements have also been made to the function and appearance of the stroller canopy, select storage areas and more.

A trademark of the BOB brand, the state-of-the-art, adjustable suspension system built into every stroller now offers increased strength and reliability, promising an exceptionally smooth ride.

Retaining BOB’s reliable two-step fold, the 2011 strollers offer easier, more intuitive access to the wrist strap, which plays the secondary role of keeping the stroller locked in place when folded.

All BOB strollers will now come equipped with an integrated accessory adapter, providing quick and easy installation of the popular Infant Car Seat Adapter - which mates with top-selling infant car seats to allow infants to ride in the stroller - and Snack Tray, a convenient space for sippy cups, snacks and more (sold separately).

Little passengers will find increased comfort during strolls, due to an ultra-supportive redesigned seat back featuring heat-press technology and a more adjustable five-point safety harness that provides an optimal, secure fit.

The Stroller Strides stroller is BOB's popular Revolution model with the addition of an accessory kit that has exercise tubes, a drink holder and a booklet on how to get in shape with your stroller!

You can get the new Stroller Strides stroller by BOB at www.strollerstrides.com.

Still the best tablet you can buy?

The Apple iPad 2 is finally here. It's a device that has been a year in the making. We've pretty much been picturing what the iPad 2 would and would not include ever since Steve Jobs donned his famous turtleneck to announce the prequel back on 27 January 2010 and we bet plenty of you have too. The outcome is a mixed kettle of fish that, like any envisaged result of rumour and murmur, ticks some of the boxes that we expected, and leaves us wanting when it comes to others.?

What this review will do is consider the differences between the original and the iPad 2, and how these alterations affect the overall impression of the device - whilst at the same time treating the iPad 2 as an entirely new device on the market (which it is) and give it the fair assessment that it deserves. What it won't do is to baby-walk you through all the aspects of the iPad and the iOS ecosystem. There are plenty of reviews, guides and analysis of those aspects on Pocket-lint already, and we feel that now, as we reach Mk.II of Apple's iOS tablet experiment (or revolution depending on how you judge it), that you're au fait with the iPad basics, such as the App Store and all the joy that brings, and the general behaviour of the iOS platform. If Apple had rolled out iOS 5.0, it may have been a different story, but we can only deal with what we've got (for now, at least)...?

So let’s jump straight in with the obvious: it looks a lot more svelte than it's big brother. We don't want to say sexy here, because that is such a clich?, but let's just say that the iPad 2 is a damn fine looking piece of kit. From the front, when taking it out of its box you may not notice the changes straight away (unless you've opted for the white iPad 2 that is). Sure, you'll probably notice the ultra-slim silver trim around the edges - but surely not even the most eagle-eyed user will notice the front-facing camera at first sight.?

No, it's only when you pick up your iPad 2 that you'll really notice the difference: 15 per cent lighter doesn't sound a lot, but those 117 fewer grams (Wi-Fi and 3G version) makes a big difference in the hand. As does the 4.2mm trimmed off the thickness: the iPad 2 is so thin at the edges that it is almost sharp. Not MacBook Air sharp, but sharp none the less. It's a bit deceiving actually - the edges do make the iPad 2 seem skinnier than it actually is, but that's no bad thing we suppose.?

The iPad 2's curved edges make for easier manipulation of the buttons too as you push up against the device rather than sideways on. It’s a little detail it has to be said, but with Apple it is always about the little details. The 30-pin dock connector is still down the bottom as per the Apple norm as is the speaker grill - although this is now curved up around the bottom corner and is much bigger. The result is bigger, clearer sound, and it's also much less of an issue when it comes to accidentally covering it up when playing games.

You've also now got a couple of camera lenses on show, which is obviously a major update to the original. On the front you'll see the 0.3-megapixel video calling camera which is capable of shooting 640 x 480 30fps (the brightness sensor has been bumped up above it), and on the rear you'll see the 0.7-megapixel, 720p video shooting (again, 30fps) camera to which you can apply a 5x digital zoom. The cameras mean the inclusion of a couple of new Apple pre-installed apps, FaceTime and PhotoBooth, both of which will be familiar to Apple-users already. We also found that the front camera works within the (albeit iPhone-stretched) Skype app which gives the iPad 2 a fair head start over Android rivals at the moment.?

Using the rear facing camera in public is something that is certainly going to draw attention and not for the self-conscious. Holding what amounts to an A4 pad in front of your face to take a picture isn’t easy and even then the picture quality you’ll get is sub par at best. Add in the smart cover (an optional ?39) and you’ve then got to worry about what happens to that, holding it while you hold the iPad 2 while you try and take a picture, although it does fold back on itself. But let’s be fair - is the iPad going to become your camera of choice when on the move? It is unlikely to see the easy snappy action that your mobile phone gets, so perhaps it isn’t a huge practical issue.?Photos can be shared and videos thrown into iMovie (an optional ?2.99).

Like the iPhone you get touch focus and a digital zoom and there are a number of apps to help you make the most of the camera. Included and entertaining for about 2 minutes is an iPad version of PhotoBooth. It’s really there to show off the power of the new iPad and its dual-core processor, but it will no doubt entertain your kids for longer than it will you.?

But it's inside the device that you'll really notice the improvements. No, we're not advising you to hack open your new toy - just fire up some apps and take a look just how quickly they load. The iPad 2 now rocks a dual-core A5 processor, with double the RAM (now DDR2) at 512MB. These hardware upgrades, along with Imagination Technologies' PowerVR SGX 543MP2 (in theory more than twice the horsepower of the SGX 535 found in Apple's A4 chips) means a 9x increase in graphics performance too.

Just open the BBC News app for example. Side-by-side with the original iPad the app is loaded with the current news stories around 2 seconds faster. But it's when clicking on video content that you'll notice the difference. As the iPad switches into video mode, the news story is up and running in a fraction of the time that it used to take. You'll also notice a massive difference when clicking a link in an email, attaching photos to an email, switching between apps within the multi-task bar, or switching to Street View on Google Maps. Basically, it does everything your iPad 1 does, only much quicker. Heck even swiping around the homepage feels faster.

Battery life still seems as good as ever, we've been taking our iPad out and about all weekend - using the Orange 3G connection to download apps and browse, as well as using both cameras and we've still got plenty of juice in the tank. Apple is stating “the same amazing 10-hour battery life” and we're not going to argue with that. We've certainly not noticed a difference from the original.

And, despite the lack of a higher resolution display (it's the same 1024 x 768 display as the original), games look superb and play without any stutter at all. We gave Neon Battle HD a testing and, despite it being an awful game, it performed much smoother than on an iPad 1. Real Racing 2 HD, which has been “iPad 2 optimised” was noticeably different as well - the edges of vehicles were much less jagged and light effects were a lot more natural. Real Racing 2 HD also has the added bonus of, with the optional HDMI connector, outputting the game to your TV in glorious 1080p, leaving the screen for maps and the like. It’s stunning.

So far so good then. But there does of course have to be a few bad points from somewhere, and with the iPad 2 (or at least the three new iPads we've got our hands on - 64GB Wi-Fi and 3G version from Orange, Vodafone and Apple) there seems to be a bit of a problem with backlight bleeding. The problem isn't noticeable on the usual homescreen, or on most apps, or browsing. It's only when looking at a dark image, or watching a movie with night scenes that it becomes apparent. The backlights are clearly visible around the edges, creating a yellowish tint, which ruins the overall feel of the scene or image.?

A quick look on Google highlights that we're not the only people suffering this issue - and a call to the Apple Store indicates that it's quite widespread. The Apple rep did say, to be fair, that they would exchange any faulty product but stated that it was a known issue and it may happen again on a replacement device. Our advice would be to wait around a few weeks for a new batch (even if the problem is only sporadic) - although, looking at the iPad 2 sales news, you've probably got no choice but to wait anyway.

Now, in the introduction we did state that we'd treat the iPad 2 as a new device, judging it on its own merits. But it's just so damn hard to not be a bit annoyed at Apple. And not because it is holding stuff back for the next version (as it always does with all of its devices) such as NFC, or direct HDMI out, but because it missed the obvious inclusion that would have led to the iPad 2 putting the original into the shade, and create an instant wow-factor. We know that an iPhone 4 higher-resolution “Retina display” would probably be too costly in terms of manufacturing to include on a 9.7-inch screen. But would it have caused too many heart-attacks in the Cupertino boardroom to include a higher resolution display??

The Motorola Xoom is going to come packing a 1280 x 800 display, as is the skinnier-than-thou Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 - the two devices that will probably be the iPad 2's main competitors when it comes to tablet supremacy for 2011. It may well be that Apple has missed a trick in not altering the iPad 2's display from the 1024 x 768, 132ppi, LED-backlit IPS LCD as was used in the original. It's certainly a shame to have the power of the dual-core A5 chip, with its 9x faster graphics, and not have a sparkly new display to show its capabilities off.

In a survey of the 632 people who queued up at the Regent Street store for the launch of the iPad 2, 33 per cent said they wanted it for games - they won’t be disappointed. We're sure that game developers will make good use of the newly introduced three-axis gyroscope giving you a total of six-axis when you combine the accelerometer - but it's the speed that makes the iPad 2 another heavyweight Apple product that will sell by the millions.

Whether that speed alone is enough to convince the nay-sayers, who are slightly underwhelmed by the iPad 2's release (could iPad 1.5 have been a better moniker?), or even prove to be enough to fight off the Android threat from the likes of Motorola, HTC and Samsung, remains to be seen. There are elements of the iPad 2 that will frustrate, its reliance on the PC is certainly one and the way it handles notifications is another.

Verdict:

Those grumbles shouldn't take away from the fact that the iPad 2 is a great device. A superb tablet that builds on the strengths of the original and packs a heftier punch with a much slimmer waistline. The iPad 2 is the Manny Pacquiao of the tablet game, and the original is the Ricky Hatton. Sure, your iPad 1 looks great on it's own, talks the talk and never really lets you down. But when you put it in the ring, up against the new champion, it looks well out of its depth.?

Our suggestion to iPad 1 owners who cannot afford to, or don't yet want to upgrade from their 2010 machine, would be this: do not play with an iPad 2. Leave it well alone. Because if you even spend 5 minutes with it, you'll realise what an old slugger your tablet is. In much the same way that the iPhone 4 blasted the 3GS out of the water (and the 3GS the 3G), it is only really when compared directly that you notice that your older iDevice isn't as quick as you once thought it was. Don’t go near it and you’ll never notice the difference.?

And that's the real strength of the iPad 2 - it's just so bloomin' fast. As for the claim that this is best tablet current on the market we would have to agree. The Xoom (out in the US but not in the UK) does challenge somewhat with its Google Honeycomb OS, but can’t match the simplicity or stability of the iPad 2, or the strength of its app ecosystem.

Yes, the cameras could have been better on the iPad 2, the screen could have had a higher resolution and we’re desperate to see iOS5 enhancements, but overall, we love the iPad 2. We love it like we loved the original. We just don't love it quite as much as we'd expected that we would.?

Tags: Tablets Apple Apple iPad 2 iPad 2 iPad

               

Apple iPad 2 originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 29 Mar 2011 12:46:46 +0100

If you had only one book to pass on to the next generation, what would it be? Writers and readers name the classics they most treasure

Word of mouth – and its more formal big sisters, reading groups or prize lists – is still one of the most effective ways of promoting good writing, even in these days of ebooks and downloads. To honour that, the Orange prize for fiction has joined forces with Vintage Classics to ask 100 people to name the one book they would pass on to the next generation – their so-called inheritance classic.

The choices are fascinating. Certain authors make more than one appearance: Woolf, Austen, Tolstoy, Hardy, Faulkner, Misses C and E Brontë, Orwell, Harper Lee and Homer had more mentions than I'd have expected. Interesting, too, was how proportionately few contemporary novels make the cut – White Teeth, Wolf Hall and Trainspotting are here, but no Money or Saturday.

This is a list of individual readers' individual choices. But, taken as a whole, it gives an insight into how, and why, classics become classics. Childhood reading matters a great deal, not only the books that we are given to read by teachers or parents, but also those discoveries we make for ourselves. Which leads me to my choice – Agatha Christie, the first author I discovered. Kept inside by the rain during a wet summer holiday in Devon with my family in the 1970s, I raided the bookshelves and found a battered paperback edition of The Murder at the Vicarage. The day was spent reading and eating Cadbury's Fruit & Nut, and it was the start of a love affair. My inheritance classic is a favourite Christie, Sleeping Murder. Not only is it a fine psychological thriller, superbly plotted, with a great sense of place and time but, just as important, it's a novel about female experience and where the hero is an old woman. Subversive indeed. Kate Mosse

Michael Morpurgo
The Man Who Planted Trees, by Jean Giono

The Man Who Planted Trees is the story of one man's mission to bring new life to a bleak landscape in southern France. It's a story that resonates with children and grownup children alike. I used it a lot when I was teaching in primary schools. What's wonderful about Giono's novella is that it reads like non-fiction, which is the mark of all great fiction. He's one of those people who somehow manages to paint a landscape with very few words. There are no words wasted. It's one of those amazing stories that is even more relevant now than before because we are screaming to find a way of bringing new life to our planet. This is the most compelling book I know and maybe the most important. Wish I'd written it myself. Very cross about that.

Lionel Shriver
Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates

Revolutionary Road reads as a surprisingly modern book, despite being published in 1960. It's very readable, and it still seems relevant now, which would suggest that it will stand the test of time. The book captures the dissatisfaction that a lot of people have with office life, with feeling like you're a cog in the machine and that you're cut out for something better. What I especially like is the characters' conviction that there's this other place you could go to where all your troubles would be solved. In their case, it's France. But I've got friends in New York who, when George Bush was running for the second time, vowed that if he won, they would move to Italy. They didn't, but it shows that it's still a commonplace notion in America that you can move to Europe and your life will get better.

Will Self
Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf

There are many books worthy of future generations, and Mrs Dalloway just happens to be one that I read recently. That said, I think it's a beautiful piece of writing that sustains the idea that you don't need omniscient narrators, and you don't need all the conventional literary carpentry in order to write a novel. It was the point at which Virginia Woolf took on the Joycean revolution of the novel and tried to tell a story from the perspective of consciousness, rather than the omniscient narrative. The story also takes place at a very interesting point in time. It is set in the late 1920s, when women had recently obtained the vote, so in some senses it speaks about the change in female consciousness that had occurred in the first two to three decades of the 20th century.

Brian Keenan
The Plague, by Albert Camus

I think I was in my mid-teens when I first read The Plague. It's a book about being aware and making choices and thinking about commitments, about some of the most important issues you have to face as a teenager. I was kind of in my angry young man stage at the time, but there was something about Camus that stuck with me. He stood out among his contemporaries as having more of a human face. The book is more instructive about how to live with meaningfulness, but there's a generosity of spirit behind the writing. His characters are very, very well drawn. I find them totally human, facing dilemmas that we all have to face. When I came home from my time in Lebanon, a friend asked if I wanted a book for the train. I immediately asked for Camus. It was just spontaneous. Somebody who can write a novel that has the power of a parable is a very great writer indeed.

Martha Lane Fox
The Iliad, by Homer

My dad first read The Iliad to me when I was about 12. Seeing passages written 2,500 years ago moving him to tears really influenced how I thought about the past. I just loved the story – it is astonishing, the story of Troy, and all of the different conflicts, tangles and relationships, the heroes and heroines. Re-reading it when I was older, I got more from the more complex love relationships – the warriors departing and leaving their wives and lovers, knowing they were not coming back. It is about war and the violence and sacrifices made. You can feel the tug of that thread from Homer's day through to today.

Bear Grylls
Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe

I read Robinson Crusoe when I was about 11 and it took me on an adventure and allowed me that dream: what if . . . ? I now read it to my eldest son and I see his eyes light up just like mine did, which gives the book another magical edge. It inspired me and the work I do – I have done many desert island shows now and they are always among the most popular. It is in people's psyches to be fascinated by islands, being a castaway, and imagining what it is like to survive alone.

Marina Lewycka
The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot

The Mill on the Floss is about the rise and fall of a Lincolnshire family and moves subtly between humour, polemic and tragedy. Each time I read it I find something new. It's a powerful, emotional story but it's also a feminist novel and the issue of women's right to education is very well expressed. George Eliot is one of those brilliant writers who manages to be polemical while telling a really good story. It would be lovely to think that the issues of class, snobbery and gender inequality it examines so movingly will seem irrelevant to the next generation – and that the book will be interesting mainly as a curiosity – but I don't think they will go away as easily as my generation of the 60s had hoped.

Jenni Murray
The Women's Room, by Marilyn French

The Women's Room isn't a literary masterpiece to compare with something like The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing, which was really the first time women's experience was talked about, but it summons the atmosphere of a revolutionary period in gender politics. My copy, read in my twenties in one sitting, is full of underlinings and exclamation marks. The part that always stands out for me is where the characters are sitting around talking about independence, the importance of female friends, going to university, and one of them says, isn't it irritating when discussions about feminism end up with who does the dishes? I am certain that's as relevant now as it was in the 1970s.

Interviews by Emine Saner, Tom Meltzer, Patrick Kingsley and Nicole Jackson

The Orange Inheritance collection is published by Vintage Classics on 7 April. Kate Mosse, Lionel Shriver and Mark Haddon will be speaking about their 'Inheritance Classics' at Foyles, Charing Cross Road, London WC2 on Saturday 7 May. Visit foyles.co.uk/events-at-foyles for tickets and information.

Famed attorney and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz has been hired by former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, who has been charged in connection with the 2000 murder of an investigative journalist:

“I look forward to contributing my experience as a defence lawyer and specialist on forensic evidence to this case,” said Mr Dershowitz in a statement circulated by a spokesman for Mr Kuchma.

“I am especially committed to the search for truth in this case.”

The choice of Dershowitz, known for his first-amendment work in the United States, is a significant one for Kuchma, who stands accused of silencing one of his most prominent critics. A recording of the president ordering subordinates to "deal" with Gongadze was a major precipitating factor in the 2004 Orange Revolution. Three former interior ministry employees were found guilty of Gongadze's murder in 2008. 

In February, Dershowtiz spoke with FP's Charles Homans about his defense of another controversial international figure, Julian Assange, calling Wikileaks "the Pentagon Papers case for the 21st Century."

Can't see the video? Click here

Deus Ex is serious business, and over the past months a lot of fans have been pretty vocal about the amount of highlighting Deus Ex: Human Revolution features for items you can interact with. It would make the game too easy, it would break immersion, too much orange, etc.

Eidos Montreal forum member and superhero "Graeme" has collected a ridiculous amount of these type of comments and created a poll that sits snuggly below the stickied posts on the official forum. Currently the "ON/OFF toggle" and "Only highlight one object in range at a time" options have the most votes.

If you read through the forum thread it becomes clear that while some people want to remove the full highlighting (like in the above video) entirely, having a choice between full highlighting of objects, close-range highlighting like in the original Deus Ex, and the option of having no highlighting at all is something everybody can live with.

I agree with having those three options, because it would offer a choice to hardcore fans without debilitating the experience for other types of players. If you feel strongly about this, pitch in and vote or let your voice be heard. It's just too bad that you can't vote on the "three options" solution. Hopefully Eidos Montreal will keep this in mind with 5 months to go, eh?

Highlighting Poll - What, specifically, should happen? [Deus Ex: Human Revolution forum]

When she was arrested in an FBI sting in a Manhattan coffee shop last June on charges of espionage, it looked like Anna Chapman would disappear into obscurity in Russia. Less than a year later she's the darling of the country's media, has her own TV show and is tipped as a rising star of the political right

Anna Chapman, the "sultry Russian secret agent" who hit the headlines last year after being exposed as a deep-cover operative in the United States, says she bears no ill will towards the man who betrayed her. And why should she? Since being freed as part of a dramatic spy swap deal in Vienna in July 2010, the flame-haired daughter of a Russian career diplomat has rarely been out of the limelight, taking up a number of lucrative job offers and positioning herself for a move into big-time politics. "It was the start of something great and beautiful," Chapman gushed on a recent Russian TV show. Or, as she puts it on her newly launched website: "The day I returned to Moscow was my second birthday."

It wasn't hard to predict that only good things awaited Chapman once she was safely back in Russia. The country's all-powerful premier, Vladimir Putin, had said that Chapman and her former comrades would "work in worthy places" and have "bright, interesting lives".

"Every single one of these people has gone through a difficult time… in the interests of their homeland," said Putin, the ex-KGB officer. And while a number of her former colleagues have reportedly been rewarded with cushy posts at state-run companies, it is Chapman's star that has risen by far the highest.

A month after their deportation, Putin joined up with the failed spies for a karaoke-type evening, where they crooned together the Soviet-era song – and unofficial Russian intelligence service anthem – "From Where the Motherland Begins". After that cosy night out, things moved fast for Chapman. She was awarded a top state honour by President Dmitry Medvedev, posed for erotic – and lucrative – photos for men's magazines, and was handed her own primetime TV show. She did, however, turn down a role in a porn film, despite being offered a "substantial" fee by the Vivid Entertainment adult-film company.

Chapman has also been made the face of the ruling United Russia party's youth movement and has been tipped to win a seat in parliament in upcoming elections. On top of all this, she has registered her surname as a trademark; has brought out a poker app and a slew of Chapman-own products, including perfume, watches and vodka, is expected to hit the shops soon. The 29-year-old provincial Russian also has a Max Clifford-type agent to handle "commercial projects", which include highly paid interviews and photo shoots.

The irony is, of course, that Anna Chapman is being rewarded for doing her job badly. Not only was she duped by the FBI into blowing her cover, but she apparently failed to turn up any useful information for Moscow. Espionage charges were not brought against a single member of the spy ring, as there was no indication that any classified information had been accessed. Prosecutors instead had to settle for charges of "failure to declare foreign agent status" and money laundering. Chapman and the other nine agents were exchanged for just four American spies. As US vice president Joe Biden put it: "We got back four really good ones. And the 10, they've been here a long time, but they hadn't done much."

Unlike Britain, with its traditional fondness for incompetence, Russia has never been known for its willingness to celebrate defeat. Is Chapman's unlikely fame an indication of a startling new Russian mindset? Not quite. In an Orwellian feat of reinterpretation, dominant state-run media outlets have portrayed the Chapman saga as a feelgood story, her life held up as something to be envied, aspired to. Over New Year, the Channel One TV station ran a This is Your Life-style tribute to Chapman, described by the host as "without any exaggeration, the woman of the year". The programme kicked off with shaky home-video footage of the spy-to-be as a Soviet schoolgirl reciting poetry and giggling into the camera before Chapman herself, dressed in a figure-hugging green outfit, strode into the studio to warm applause from the audience. "I have to say, you look even better than in your photos," the host enthused. During the hour-long programme, Chapman's childhood friends, grandmother and "first love" were all rolled out to pay tribute, and Chapman had the good grace to blush a red as deep as her hair. "She is worthy of applause because she worked abroad for our nation," a celebrity guest – Soviet-era TV star Anna Shatilova – exclaimed.

Chapman didn't give much away during the show, sticking to cliché and aphorism for the most part. When asked about her deportation from the US, she replied: "I believe that everything that happens is for the best." She did, however, drop a hint about a possible new television role. "Watch your screens next year," she advised viewers. "I'll reveal all the secrets."

This turned out to be her catchphrase as presenter of Mysteries of the World with Anna Chapman, a weekly "investigative" show that launched in January. "The most mysterious woman in Russia presents the most mysterious show," the programme's producer Mikhail Tukmachev promised in promo ads.

In the first episode Chapman looked into claims that verses from the Koran had been appearing on the skin of a young boy from Russia's North Caucasus republic of Dagestan. Not that Chapman actually visited the volatile region, home to more than 50% of terrorist attacks in Russia in 2010. For that a – presumably expendable – male reporter was dispatched, leaving Chapman to pop up on the screen every now and then in an eye-catching red and black outfit. Subsequent shows have seen similar studio-based investigations by Chapman into topics including demonic possession and the fate of St Petersburg's famous lost Amber Room, which disappeared after being looted by Nazi troops in the Second World War. In case you were wondering, she didn't find it.

Ren TV, one of the few non state-run television companies left in Russia, screens the show. But producer Tukmachev denies that the appearance of a figure with obvious Kremlin connections is a sign that the channel is slowly losing whatever modicum of independence it may enjoy. "Nothing has changed at the channel since the arrival of Chapman," he tells me. "As you can see, there is nothing political about the programme at all.

"The idea for the show came about quite spontaneously," Tukmachev adds. "I was having a meeting with Chapman, and we came up with the theme of mysteries – one that both of us find interesting. She had no previous experience, of course, but she learns quicker than most."

But why did the show's glamorous presenter not get out and about and try to uncover the truth herself? Why was she largely confined to a sterile Moscow studio?

"Well, she can't do everything," Tukmachev says.

And yet, not CONTENT with conquering the world of show business, Chapman is also carving out a career for herself as a politician. In late 2010 she joined the leadership of Molodaya Gvardiya (Young Guard), the youth wing of Putin's United Russia. The movement – along with a similar group called Nashi (Ours) – is widely viewed as a potential Kremlin weapon against what officials here nervously call the "orange scenario", a reference to the street protest-inspired revolution that swept pro-western politician Viktor Yushchenko to power in neighbouring Ukraine in 2004. In 2005 the then-Nashi leader Vasily Yakemenko announced that if such a thing were ever to occur in Russia he would make one call to his "colleagues in the Spartak Moscow FC fan movement", and they would "assemble 5,000 of their supporters to chase away those who came out on the streets in support of western-backed politicians".

Moscow remains nervous about the possibility of an Egypt-style uprising. Young Guard was recently instructed by Kremlin ideologist Vladislav Surkov to get ready for the 2011 parliamentary and 2012 presidential polls. "Prepare yourselves for the elections, and train your brains and your muscles," he told group members at a meeting in Moscow in December. "The polls must be won by Medvedev, Putin and United Russia." Surkov's pep talk came shortly after Young Guard had posted images of a number of "traitor" journalists on its website with the words "Will Be Punished" stamped on them.

One of the journalists, Oleg Kashin, who had written extensively about pro-Kremlin and United Russia youth groups, was later beaten almost to death outside his home by unidentified assailants. Young Guard denied any involvement and took Kashin's photo off its site.

Naturally this unpleasantness was missing from Chapman's debut speech at a Young Guard congress late last year. A wisp of hair hanging over one eye, a smiling Chapman urged some 2,000 delegates to "transform the future, starting with ourselves". "If all of us were joyful, we could do something useful and new," she continued over the low-level buzz of chatter. "There would," she revealed, "be less negativity in society if every single one of us woke up with a smile on our face." Chapman declined to reveal how Russians were to put aside the country's most crippling problems – corruption, alcoholism and rampant police brutality, to name just three – and start the day with a ready-made grin. She made a speedy exit, avoiding waiting journalists with the "deftness of a former secret agent", as one blogger put it. The speech was much played on Russian TV.

Like her political message, Chapman's role in the Young Guard movement has so far been unclearly defined. One week she is helping to "educate the youth of Russia" and "increase patriotism", while the next she is advising on "business issues" or "modernisation". Young Guard leader Timur Prokopenko dubbed his newest recruit "a hero of her generation". I call him to clarify. "Well, her biography and everything that has been written about her has made her very popular – a hero – among students and young girls," he tells me. But did he share their attitude? "As the leader of a youth organisation," he replies tactfully, "I am obliged to support their opinion."

Chapman may not be confined to youth politics for long. United Russia has pencilled her in as a candidate for December's parliamentary polls, and she is expected to stand – and win – in her hometown of Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad. "The party needs young beautiful girls," senior United Russia official Frants Klintsevich commented. "She can bring more supporters with her. She's a smart, sharp person." Or as former newsreader and political analyst Samir Shakhbaz told me: "She's kind of a role model, and she has lots of fans. She lived the dream of many young people here to be a 007-type figure, or at least the Russian version of it."

United Russia's ranks are already swelling with celebrities, from footballers Andrei Arshavin and Roman Pavlyuchenko to a host of domestic pop and rock stars. One famous face Chapman will not be meeting at rallies, however, is former Bolshoi Theatre prima ballerina Anastasia Volochkova, who angrily quit the party last month. "They weren't interested in any projects I suggested," she explained. "They just used me to advertise the party. And I have no desire to prostitute myself." In Chapman – dubbed "Agent 90-60-90" by Russian tabloids because of her centimetre figure measurements – United Russia has a ready-made replacement for the glamorous Volochkova. And one that – for now at least – has no objections to being used solely for her looks and fame.

But despite her ubiquity, it's arguable whether Chapman is popular among ordinary Russians. As ever in this country, it's the internet where people's true feelings find a voice. And Russia's assorted bloggers and message-board users seem to be unequivocal in their disdain.

"Citizen of the world Anna Chapman is undoubtedly the major hero of our vast country," writes one user on Live Journal – Russia's most popular blogging platform. "We all also dream of dropping our knickers abroad and stealing enemy secrets." "A true symbol of our time!" offers another. "How we need such people! Those ready to join whatever they are told to! To sleep with whomever they are told to!" Other comments are more explicit, involving combinations of the words "Putin" and "whore".

Ex-spies are supposed to disappear quietly, and Chapman's lust for publicity has upset many former members of the Russian intelligence community. "No real professional would act like this. It's a disgrace to see how she is cashing in on her past," an ex-operative said on the day of her television debut. "After all," he added, after insisting on anonymity, "it's not like she did anything she should be proud of."

It can seem that Chapman has been thrust upon the Russians. But it's not so easy to fathom why. Is she simply a sharp operator who has skilfully turned disaster into triumph? Or is she being manipulated, willingly or otherwise, by the powers that be? For now Chapman is giving almost nothing away. Not for free, anyhow.

Marc Bennetts is the author of Football Dynamo (Virgin Books) and is now writing a book about Russia's fascination with the occult

Ukrainian police arrest ex-Interior Minister Yuri Lutsenko, an Orange Revolution ally of opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko.

Former oil magnate one of a long line of opponents to fall foul of Russian leader

Vladimir Putin's unforgiving brand of vendetta politics today claimed another prominent victim with the guilty verdict against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former oil magnate who dared oppose the Kremlin strongman.

There was never going to be any other result. In modern-day Russia, challenging Putin is like standing in front of a tank. Either get out of the way or expect – sooner or later – to be flattened.

Whatever else he is, Putin is implacable, relentless and unpitying when dealing with perceived enemies. In this, he follows a long-established Russian leadership tradition, and the public seems to like it, affording him approval ratings of 70% or above.

But the lengths (and depths) to which the former KGB spy appears ready to go have fuelled claims, such as those publicised by WikiLeaks, that Russia has become a corrupt "mafia state" under his tutelage.

An early example of the vendetta as a policy tool came in 1999 when Putin, then a largely unknown appointee of President Boris Yeltsin, took down Yuri Skuratov, Russia's powerful prosecutor-general.

Putin and the then interior minister, Sergei Stepashin, held a press conference to discuss a video, aired on state-controlled television, in which a naked man similar in appearance to Skuratov was shown cavorting with two young women.

Putin said the women were prostitutes engaged in an orgy paid for by criminals.

Skuratov's real offence appears to be that he had begun a high-profile corruption investigation involving Yeltsin and his inner circle, of which Putin was a part. He hit back after the exposé, accusing Putin of personally shielding corrupt Kremlin aides.

But the following year, with Putin by now installed as the president-elect, Russia's parliament decided (with only 10 votes against) to sack Skuratov at Putin's express request. Like Khodorkovsky, he was finished.

Putin's ruthlessness was seen again and again as he cemented his grip on power in the years following Yeltsin's departure.

Opposition parties were crushed under the juggernaut of United Russia, Putin's home-made political platform. Able politicians such as Mikhail Kasyanov, who he appointed prime minister, were discarded for showing too much independence.

Unbiddable former patrons like the oligarch Boris Berezovsky, now in exile in London, became personae non grata.

Even after more than a decade in power as the president and prime minister, Putin remains unbending. Speaking this month, he accused the opposition figures Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Milov and Vladimir Ryzhkov of seeking power in order "to line their pockets".

He went on: "I think that if we allow them to do this … they'll sell out all of Russia."

Swallowing thoughts about pots and kettles, the three men vowed to sue him for "moral damages" – though much good may it do them, given the state of Russia's justice system.

In 2006 Anna Politkovskaya, a renowned journalist and human rights activist who opposed Putin's policies in Chechnya, was assassinated. Despite a state investigation, her murder remains unexplained. Others have suffered a similar fate, at home and abroad.

Seen up close in Helsinki earlier this year, Putin did not look the ogre his critics sometimes make him out to be. A physically small man who compensates by working out and pursuing outdoor sports, he appeared by turns arrogant, insecure, angry and resentful. It could explain his aggression towards those who criticise him.

Whatever the reasons, he has frequently exported personal animus into the foreign arena, too. The 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia followed a long, vindictive dispute between Putin and the Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili.

Much the same poisonous dynamic applied in Putin's dealing with Ukraine's former Orange Revolution leader, Viktor Yushchenko.

On issues such as European missile defence, Kosovo's independence and the row with Britain over Alexander Litvinenko's murder in London in 2006, Putin often appeared to take things personally – and rather badly at that.

In other cases, he would co-opt rather than confront, as he has managed to do with weaker individuals such as Germany's former chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Italy's PM Silvio Berlsuconi.

By refusing to back down, Khodorkovsky has become the latest in a long line of opponents to fall foul of Putin's vendetta politics. It is likely that he will not be the last.

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Heinous crime, extreme weather, an angry citizenry--- 2010 had a lot going on, along with marking the end of the millennium's first decade. Yet in some ways, it was just like any other year.The skeletal Landmark still marks the Downtown Mall, which seems a lot like 2008. The Meadowcreek Parkway still isn't (completely) built, which is a lot like 1980. And dwindling revenues mean local government budget shortfalls. But don't they always?Year 2010 was a lot like other years, only worse. Worse unemployment. Worse airport experiences. A staggeringly worse national debt. And hey, there's a war going on. How many years had that been?The recession is declared over, but when was the last time you saw a raise? How's the value of your home, assuming it isn't under foreclosure? A lot of us are working more while making less, and the cumulative effect is a national crankiness. What will we remember about Charlottesville in 2010? Snowpocalypse? Microbursts? The Tea Party? Tom Perriello? VQR? Where's Baldi?Certainly among the year's most painful memories will be, to quote John Casteen at UVA's 2010 graduation, "the name of Yeardley Love."Okay, although the grimness didn't seem to end, it wasn't all bad. We can still stroll down the mall or the Lawn or see the Blue Ridge Mountains to the west and thank our lucky stars we live here. The Hook had moments of pure joy. And we hope you did, too.Here's what we remember, the best and the worst of twenty-ten.First coinage of the year: "Snowpacalypse," followed by "Snowmageddon," soon used by every media outlet on the East Coast to describe the record snowfall of the winter o' 2009-2010.Most notable change wrought by Snowpacalypse: The city revises its snow ordinance after the December 18, 2009, Snowpocalypse because sidewalks, including the city's, remained unshoveled for weeks. Failure to shovel 12 hours after a snowfall was a Class 1 misdemeanor carrying up to 12 months in jail, but Police Chief Tim Longo said it was unenforceable because the city hadn't cleared its own sidewalks. Sidewalk snow removal is no longer a criminal offense and will be enforced by Neighborhood Development, much like unmowed lawns. Residents have 24 hours after a snow to clear the walks. After a warning, the city will have it shoveled and bill the slacker property owner.Most weather: The winter of 2009-2010 is the snowiest in 117 years with 56.8 inches. The summer is the hottest ever with 68 days above 90. Drought-wise, the summer was the fifth driest with 6.41 inches of rain. And then there were the damaging summer microbursts.Worst way to start the new year: Colby Eppard, 18, is gunned down by police January 1 after he steals a Greene County deputy's cruiser and embarks on a three-county chase, during which he taunts police and allegedly fires a shotgun at them. Most secretive: Commonwealth's Attorney Denise Lunsford finds that the seven officers who blasted Eppard acted properly, but refuses to reveal how many bullets struck him. According to his stepfather, it was 22 bullets and his car was hit at least 60 times. Police also refuse to release dashcam videos of the event.Most notable foreclosures, part 1: Halsey Minor bids $1.39 million to hold onto his Fox Ridge Farm January 4; the estate goes into foreclosure again less than a month later for its $6.52 million first deed of trust, an obligation Minor satisfies before the February 18 auction. Most notable foreclosures, part 2: Patricia Kluge's Vineyard Estates spec house goes on the block March 1. She and husband Bill Moses hold onto that, but are not so fortunate with Kluge Estates Winery and Vineyard, which is foreclosed for a $35 million credit line, and auctioned off December 8 with zero takers. Most notable foreclosures, part 3: Two lots on Morgantown Road owned by the father of accused killer George Huguely are foreclosed upon, but withdrawn when the company he's associated with, Maplehurst Associates, files for bankruptcy December 6, the day before the auction.Most notable foreclosures, part 4: BB&T tries to collect on $17.4 million from developers of Ragged Mountain Farm subdivision in Ivy and Murphy's Creek Farm on Blenheim Road--- Alex and Amy Toomy, Rick Carter of Southland Homes, and Jean Ann Woods--- in May, in what was Albemarle's biggest foreclosure until Kluge Estates Winery.Biggest auction: Kluge brings in Sotheby's to sell off the furnishings at her mansion, Albemarle House, now listed for sale at $24 million down from $100 million. The two-day sale June 8-9 brings in $15.4 million.Biggest boondoggle? Park-rich Albemarle gets a 1,200-acre state park January 8 instead of residential development in the growth area when Biscuit Run developers stave off foreclosure by selling the park for $9.8 million to the state and reap undisclosed tax credits from the sale.Goofiest lawsuit: Rivanna Solid Waste Authority goes after Van der Linde Recycling under federal racketeering statutes, then drops the suit January 20. Van der Linde agrees to settle for $600K. And then the city starts using former defendant Van der Linde for its recycling.Goofiest zero tolerance case: Fluvanna High senior and homecoming king Justin Sexton is handed a 364-day suspension when a school administrator finds a forgotten airsoft rifle in the back of his pickup truck. The School Board overturns it and allows him back to school two months later.Newest home for old coach: Al Groh takes a job in January with Georgia Tech along with his $4.33 million severance package from UVA after he's fired at the end of 2009's 3-9 worst season ever.Most elusive taste of freedom for Jens Soering: Lame duck Governor Tim Kaine signs a transfer on his last day in office January 15 that would have allowed the Echols scholar convicted of the 1985 double murders of his girlfriend's parents to transfer to Germany, where he would have been eligible for parole. Incoming Governor Bob McDonnell nips that in the bud, and Soering will serve out his life sentence in Virginia. Former GF Elizabeth Haysom is serving a 90-year sentence at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women.Saddest Charlottesville-Haiti earthquake connection: UVA grad and Frank Batten School for Leadership and Public Policy student Stephanie Jean-Charles dies at her family's Port-au-Prince home.Worst end to missing concert-goer: Morgan Harrington, last seen at the October 17, 2009, Metallica concert at John Paul Jones Arena, is found January 26 in a remote field at Anchorage Farm on U.S. 29 south. Her death is deemed a homicide, and DNA recovered is tied to a vicious rape in Northern Virginia five years ago, and a sketch of that suspect (far right). Worst confirmation: A brutal murderer remains at large.Worst Blue Ridge Parkway spring evening: Two friends enjoying a sunset April 5 at Rock Point Overlook randomly are fired upon. WNRN DJ Tim Davis, 27, falls approximately 100 feet and dies four days later in UVA Medical Center. Christina Floyd, 18, fights off and escapes 56-year-old Ralph Leon Jackson, who's charged in the attacks and tells her he did it because he's crazy.What if they stopped publishing the yearbook--- and no one noticed? UVA's nearly 120-year-old Corks & Curls quietly disappears after the 2008 edition, the Hook discovers in 2010. Biggest gated community scandal, continued: Glenmore Community Assocation former treasurer Michael D. Comer, who disappeared July 1, 2009, right before an audit that found hundreds of thousands missing, spends 2010 pleading guilty to his financial misdeeds: five embezzling charges in Albemarle Circuit Court, which net him 18 months in jail, and federal charges of mail fraud and evading a tax bill that could have him owing over $900K to the federal treasury. He'll be sentenced on the federal charges in March.Biggest Albemarle police scandal: Four officers are disciplined for "inappropriate" behavior "while on the clock" in March. Demoted are Scott Cox and Caroline Morris; suspended is former spokesperson Lieutenant Todd Hopwood, and leaving the department is Caleb Marden, one of the seven cops who fatally fired on teen Colby Eppard.Biggest Glenmore/Albemarle police scandal: Justine Joscelyne is watering her garden August 29 when she's shot. Police determine the shooting is accidental from a group target practicing about a half mile away on Richmond Road, and neither press charges nor release the name of the shooter. In Virginia, it's a class 1 misdemeanor to recklessly discharge firearms to "endanger the life, limb or property of any person."Biggest turnover in city government: Longtime city manager Gary O'Connell departs April 30 to take a job as head of the Albemarle County Service Authority. He's succeeded by acting city manager Maurice Jones December 3.Biggest turnover at Albemarle County: Longtime county exec Bob Tucker steps down December 31, and the Board of Supervisors hires assistant Tom Foley to take his place. And police Chief John Miller retires after 21 years September 30. Fairfax County Deputy Chief Steve Sellers is hired as new chief, and starts January 18.Biggest changing of the guard at UVA: President John Casteen retires after 20 years July 31, ushering in the era of Teresa Sullivan.Deepest cuts: Albemarle's budget is sliced by $10 million for 2010-2011, which is nearly $40 million less than two years ago.Worst way to save a few bucks: County lakes don't open until noon during the summer, and close two weeks before Labor Day to save $6,000 in salaries.Closest to the brink: The Charlottesville Ice Park shuts down June 30 after 14 years, but is saved by buyer Mark Brown, who decides to open the rink to events other than skating for half the year.Saddest losses: Sparklehorse--- Mark Linkous, 47--- commits suicide March 6. UVA grad student Matthew King is riding his bike on West Main April 19 when he's struck by a city vehicle and dies shortly after from those injuries. The mother of deceased DMB saxophonist LeRoi Moore, Roxie Holloway Moore, 80, dies April 6 from a massive heart attack. Keyboard wizard George Melvin, 63, dies in April from kidney problems stemming from diabetes. Yorktown Place developer Chuck Lewis dies May 3, and developer/Innisfree founder Mark Fried, 78, dies December 12. WTJU's "Leftover Biscuits" DJ Emmett Boaz, 63, dies shortly after going on the air November 6.Saddest loss of a benevolent billionaire: John Kluge dies September 7 at age 95.Longest sentence for high-speed chasee: Former Charlottesville High student Tsaye Simpson gets three-and-a-half years for stealing a car in August 2009 that crashed into the roof of a house at the end of Rugby Road and narrowly missed killing its occupants--- or Simpson. He had been convicted of stealing another car two months before the house scalping.Worst reason to be the center of a national story: Three weeks before graduation, fourth-year lacrosse player Yeardley Love is found dead in her apartment on May 3. Her ex-boyfriend, lacrosse player George Huguely V, who told police "her head repeatedly hit the wall," is charged with first-degree murder, and is in jail awaiting trial. His lawyer calls Love's death "an accident with a tragic outcome." Next worst: The suicide of Kevin Morrissey July 30, the managing editor at the esteemed Virginia Quarterly Review, brings national scrutiny again, this time on the topic of workplace bullying, and tars award-winning editor Ted Genoways.Biggest changes in the wake of Love's murder: UVA students are required to report arrests or convictions at registration each year. The year before Love was killed, Huguely had been arrested and Tased during a drunken altercation with a female police officer in Lexington.Biggest Ken Cuccinelli local target: The attorney general subpoenas UVA for documents pertaining to climategate scientist Michael Mann, whom Cuccinelli asserts used state funds for research that fabricates global warming. UVA resists and prevails in court; Cuccinelli comes back with narrower demands, and both sides appear headed toward court again.Next biggest Cuccinelli opinion: The AG hits the ground running after being sworn in, and offers that public universities should remove sexual orientation from anti-discrimination policies, an opinion that has Governor Bob McDonnell ordering no discrimination.Biggest Cuccinelli victory: A federal district judge in eastern Virginia rules December 13 that parts of health care reform are unconstitutional.Most likely to change the world: Oliver Kuttner wins the $5 million Progressive Automotive X prize September 16 with his very light car, the Edison2, designed to go 100 miles on one gallon of gas.Most discontent in the 5th District: Seven Republicans vie for a chance to get a piece of freshman Congressman Tom Perriello, the Democrat from Ivy. State Senator Robert Hurt from Chatham wins the primary, and goes on to defeat Perriello in the November midterm elections that shift the balance of power in Congress.Most startling revelations about 5th District candidates I: Thrice-married social-conservative, family-values extoller Feda Kidd Morton once lost custody of her children because of what the judge described as her "anger and rage." And an editorial Morton purportedly wrote has eight passages similar to an article by syndicated columnist Jeffrey Sobran. Morton maintains she merely was restating the principles of the Constitution. Most startling revelations about 5th District candidates II: Independent Jeff Clark, who was moved to run because of his opposition to health care reform, filed for bankruptcy back in the '90s when he was unable to pay hospital bills.Biggest new player in this year's elections: The Tea Party didn't exist two years ago. Now a candidate is a fool to run and not court this loose, angry-at-government-spending constituency.Best free speech v. private property debate: The Jefferson Area Tea Party cries foul when told they can't use the privately owned parking lot in front of Perriello's Charlottesville office at the Glass Building. The Tea Party claims they're thwarted from petitioning their congressman when they can't stand right outside his office, even though that's a location with low visibility from the street and Perriello invited them into the office to petition away.Worst censorship case: Albemarle High pulls the last issue of the school newspaper, The Revolution, because of an editorial that suggests student athletes should be allowed to opt out of P.E., which upsets the P.E. teachers.Best rulings for Halsey Minor: A jury awards the litigious Landmark Hotel owner over $8 million May 22 in his lawsuit against Christie's auction house. And private arbitration in June awards Minor $6.6 million from former Landmark associate Lee Danielson. Most interesting alleged use of the Landmark: In June, a neighboring business owner claims the homeless are camping out in the hotel high-rise. Police and Minor say there's no evidence the structure has become a downtown crashpad, but a few days later police nab two trespassers.Most unlikely policy changers: Michael D. Hogberg, who tried to flee police going the wrong way down I-64 June 20, was Tased in a November 2009 incident involving alcohol when he tried to flee while handcuffed, which led Albemarle police to nix such uses of a Taser. And Elisha Strom, the woman who was arrested and spent a month in jail in 2009 for publishing the address of a Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement task force member, a crime the ACLU says is unconstitutional, prompts Delegate Rob Bell to change the code in this year's General Assembly to allow law enforcement to petition the court to have their addresses removed from online public records, such as property records.Latest Elisha Strom day in court: The blogger is found not guilty of stalking ATF Agent John Stoltz December 1 in Greene County.Biggest overcharge? Attempted capital murder is slapped on wrong way driver Hogberg, who pleads guilty to felony drunk driving charges stemming from his attempted escape from police, but not guilty to intending to kill a cop while blitzed out of his mind. A judge agrees. Biggest uproar at a nonprofit radio: WTJU volunteer DJs revolt when new general manager Burr Beard suggests commercial-style play lists and rotations to boost the 7,500 listenership of the eclectic station. Beard resigns in October. Worst storm: A three-minute microburst June 24 leaves 45,000 Dominion customers without power--- some for days--- and causes more damage than Hurricane Isabel, according to Charlottesville Fire Chief Charles Werner. Approximately 50 houses are hit by trees in the city and county, and traffic gridlock is almost as bad as last December's snowpocalypse.Worst example set by an ABC agent: Driving with a .14 blood alcohol level, which is what is found after Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Special Agent Eric Jones slams into the back of a stopped truck March 4 in an official car with blue lights flashing. Jones is convicted of drunk driving and is no longer with the ABC.Worst driving under the influence injuries: Virginia Department of Transportation employee Porfirio Martinez, 50, is seriously injured July when he's the victim of a hit and run just a mile from the memorial to fallen VDOT workers on I-64 on Afton Mountain. Former Miller School student Vitalija Vasciunaite, 22, is charged with felony hit-and-run and felony maiming-while-intoxicated.Worst drunk driving fatality: Winemaker Dan Neumeister, 31, is killed October 4 when William Thompson, 58, loses control of his Ford Taurus and slams into motorcycle-riding Neumeister on Earlysville Road.Most local filmmakin': Chris Farina's World Peace and Other Fourth-Grade Achievements premieres at South by Southwest in Austin in March, as does the movie he stars in, The Parking Lot Movie, directed by UVA alum Megan Eckman.Most talked about disappearance: Bel Rio owner Jim Baldi disappears in July leaving behind clients from his bookkeeping business who claim missing funds and unpaid taxes. Baldi is indicted December 6 on embezzlement charges; the Baldi watch is ongoing.Baldi's legacy: The city drops noise levels after 11pm from 65 to 55 decibels in Belmont, where Bel Rio generated many complaints, and in Fontaine Avenue neighborhoods.Newest chapter for the Jefferson School: The historic black school is handed over for $100,000 to a group of citizens who can take advantage of tax credits to renovate it into a city center and then lease prime downtown space to the city, PVCC, and nonprofits like JABA.Toughest sell for Jeff School: Its plans include an African American Cultural Heritage Center that has some skeptics wondering if it can draw visitors and funding.Worst Downtown Mall attack: Robert Edward Kartheiser, 55, is found brutally beaten in the bushes beside the Omni August 14. No arrests have been made.Worst dental exam: Dr. George Tisdelle is convicted misdemeanor sexual battery August 18 for allegedly groping the right buttock of a departing female staffer.Worst invasion: Stinkbugs swarm the region this summer, working their way into houses and damaging fruit in orchards.Worst reappearance of a convicted killer: Carlton Arnold, 28, who served 13 years for the 1998 shooting of Ivy Road Shell station clerk Osama Hassan, is arrested September 29 shortly after his release from prison for allegedly accosting two female UVA students, fondling one of them and forcing her to withdraw money from an ATM. Arnold is charged with abduction, robbery, sexual battery, and three counts related to wielding a firearm. Biggest Canada goose massacre: Forest Lakes is the scene in May of a U.S. Department of Agriculture round up of the large, nonmigratory birds blamed for taking down a New York jet in the Hudson River in January 2009. The Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Airport requests their removal.Biggest merger: In September, Martha Jefferson Hospital joins forces with Sentara, a regional health care company from the Hampton Roads area. That same week, the hospital sells its eight-acre Locust Avenue facility for $6.5 million, in anticipation of moving into its new $275 million digs on Pantops.Least popular traffic addition: Albemarle installs photo-red cameras at the intersection of U.S. 29 and Rio Road November 12. The Rutherford Institute urges the county to reconsider.Best "exceeds expectations:" Amtrak's Northeast Regional train between Lynchburg and Boston doubles its projected ridership--- to 103,351-- and revenue--- $5.2 million--- during its first year of service, which is celebrated October 7.Worst anniversary: Four years have passed since the battered body of Justine Swartz Abshire, 27, was found November 3, 2006, on a dark, deserted Orange road by her husband, Eric Abshire, in what initially was believed to be a hit and run. No arrests have been made, but Justine's parents have filed a civil lawsuit against their son-in-law.Highest profile alleged throttling: Attorney and former mayor Frank Buck is charged with assault November 11 by client Milton Leo John.Highest profile writer: Kathy Erskine takes the National Book Award for young adults fiction for her book, Mockingbird.Largest wrongful death award: The family of Jessica Lester, who died in 2007 after an Allied Concrete truck crushed her car, is awarded $10.6 million plus interest by a jury December 9. Biggest split between homeless support groups: The Salvation Army forbids its clients from hanging out at the director Tom Shadyac-funded Haven.#

How One Great Team Can Transform an Entire Organization Author : Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton First off, I have to say I love the topic of change and any book that covers how to make change happen is one of interest to me.  There are however many books on the subject of change that [...] Related posts:

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Timothy Snyder

Independence Square in Minsk, Belarus’s sad capital, is one of the most terrifying public spaces in Europe. It is nothing but concrete, steel, glass and fearsome horizons—no benches, shelter, or anything for people who might wish to do something so normal as to assemble and speak together. Where anything vertical rises from the ground, it bears a video camera, ensuring that any gathering can be observed by the Belarusian KGB. And yet, when Aleksandr Lukashenko claimed victory by an improbably large absolute majority in the presidential elections on December 19, people came, in the tens of thousands, to protest the official results.

By claiming an absolute majority, Lukashenko could pronounce his reelection to a fourth term as president, without resorting to a second round (which public opinion polls indicate he might lose). Very likely, he chose December 19 for the first round of the presidential elections because he knew it would be very cold. It hurts more to be hit by batons in freezing weather. And Independence Square looks like nothing more than the site of massacres past and future.

Still the protesters came, in the cold, carrying the flag of the European Union, signs demanding fair elections, and here and there crosses and icons. They raised the traditional Belarusian flag (banned under Lukashenko) on public buildings. They came, women and men, young and old, knowing what they were risking. Belarus is a police state, where everyone knew that Lukashenko would be reelected regardless of what the ballot boxes held, and where Lukashenko knew that any protest would have to be in Minsk, the one truly big city in the country, where the majority of citizens most likely oppose him. They came, and they called for the president to resign, and called out “Long live Belarus!” But not everyone who wanted to protest reached the mass gathering. In the avenues leading to Independence Square, riot police in plain clothes attacked some of the people trying to reach the city center.

Amid the peaceful chanting, a group tried to enter a government building and broke some glass, in what certainly looks, in all of the video available, like a provocation. The state militia appeared, as if on signal, their shields held together menacingly, as they are taught to do. They were challenged: by young women with flowers, by an older woman with a sign, by a man in uniform. The crowd chanted: “the militia with the people!” No such luck. The militia in uniform seemed to be operating in cooperation with black-clad plainclothesmen who were doing much of the beating. They cleared the square. Buses of Belarusians disappeared to parts unknown; according to the official report 639 people were arrested. Among those beaten were correspondents for Russian, Polish, and American media. The opposition group Charter 97 left a last Facebook posting: “We’re all at the KGB”—Belarus’s secret police is still known by that Soviet name.

Also arrested or beaten were most of the nine candidates who had been allowed to run against Lukashenko in the first round. According to early reports from Belarusian bloggers and in the Polish press, presidential candidates Mikola Statkevich, Andrei Sannikau, and Ryhor Kastusiau were arrested. According to witnesses, presidential candidate Vital Rymasheuski was beaten. The leading opposition candidate, the writer and leader of the “Speak the Truth” movement Uladzimir Niakliaeu, sixty-four years old, was beaten, suffered a concussion, and the apparently abducted by seven men in civilian clothing from the hospital where has being treated.

As I write, these events are still unfolding, and the facts of the crackdown are inevitably subject to revision. But it is absolutely clear that people who stood for election were beaten on election day, and that a large-scale protest of questionable electoral results was dispersed with brutal violence. According to local observers and the OSCE, the elections failed to meet democratic standards, especially with respect to a transparent counting of votes. The Belarusian prosecutor general has already announced that every single person who appeared on Independence Square is subject to criminal charges, since public assembly without permission is a crime in Belarus. Lukashenko calls those arrested “bandits and vandals.”

This might be a good time for Americans to ask: do we have a foreign policy that promotes human rights and democracy? For many, any such mission was discredited by Iraq; but we might remember, from the revolutions of 1989 and the Ukrainian Orange Revolution of 2004, that peaceful regime change is possible when all sides agree to the democratic rules of the game. Lukashenko clearly does not, and the only power that might persuade him is Russia. After a difficult year of sparring over gas prices, Moscow and Minsk mended their relations, and the Russian leadership endorsed Lukashenko for president. But if Russia wants closer relations with the European Union, a far more important partner than Belarus after all, should it jeopardize its chances by supporting an openly repressive regime in Minsk?

The very fact that multiple candidates were allowed to stand for office and run open electoral campaigns was a gesture by Lukashenko towards the EU, which he has been courting to balance Russia. It is to be hoped that Brussels and Moscow will see an opportunity in Minsk to clarify their own relations. After the brutality of Independence Square, Brussels should make it clear that Russia can improve its position in Europe by way of peaceful negotiations with the EU, or flaunt its power by supporting a repressive neighboring tyrant—but not both at the same time. The deal to be made with Minsk is simple: the first round of elections should be held again, local and international observers will be allowed to monitor and carry out exit polls, and Lukashenko should have to contest a second round with whomever gets the second-most votes. Moscow can’t be expected to take the initiative, but it ought to be rewarded and respected if it does not impede Brussels and Washington if they choose to make such demands. Of course, no such thing will happen without American and European leaders willing to take some risks—albeit far smaller ones than the Belarusians beaten on Independence Square.

Agent formerly living undercover in US to become a leader of fanatical pro-Putin youth group, say reports

Anna Chapman, the Russian sleeper agent at the centre of a spy ring in the US, is to become a leader of the youth wing of Vladimir Putin's United Russia party, according to reports in Moscow.

Russian media said Chapman would be appointed at a congress of Molodaya Gvardiya (Young Guard) in the capital tomorrow. "Chapman will become the head of one of the new governing bodies of Molodaya Gvardiya," a source in the organisation told a newspaper.

Vedomosti said Chapman, 28, would be assigned work with "patriots and young businesspeople".

Nationalist youth groups like Molodaya Gvardiya are seen by the Kremlin as an essential tool in attempts to suppress "the orange scenario" - a reference to mass protests known as the orange revolution that forced a change in Ukraine's leadership in 2005.

Putin, the prime minister, has already expressed his admiration for Chapman and the other nine deep-cover Russian agents who were exposed and ejected from the US in June.

In July, he got together with the putative spies - who were never formally accused of espionage - to sing nostalgic Soviet songs. He praised them for "suffering daily dangers" and predicted they would "work in worthy places" and "have bright and interesting lives".

President Dmitry Medvedev later awarded the agents unspecified state honours in a ceremony at the Kremlin.

Molodaya Gvardiya is a fanatically pro-Putin youth group that fell under suspicion last month, when newspaper reporter Oleg Kashin was beaten close to death with an iron bar outside his home in Moscow. The group had earlier denounced Kashin as a "journalist-traitor" and published his photograph on its website with the caption: "Will be punished."

Chapman - known to Russian tabloids as "Agent 90-60-90" because of her figure measurements, in cms – was not available for comment. She has given no in-depth interviews since being deported from the US but has posed semi-naked for men's magazines, attended a rocket launch at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and shown up at a technology forum.

In September, the 10 deported agents travelled together for a holiday at Lake Baikal in Siberia. They descended in a mini-submarine to the bottom of the lake and "ate local delicacies", according to the lifenews.ru website.

Ukrainian members of political parties who participated in the former Soviet republic's 2004 Orange Revolution that brought the country's former president Viktor Yushchenko to power, intend to create a joint opposition party.

Ukraine's former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko was charged Monday with abuse of power, a crime that could put the charismatic Orange Revolution leader in jail for a decade and keep her out of politi