THE AUDIO GENERALIST: NEW POSTING

Check out the fresh interview with David Anderson,
one of Britain's most creative animators
on The Audio Generalist

THE BLACK WORLD

Trevor Paglen, an artist and photographer finishing his Ph.D. in geography at the University of California, Berkeley, is fascinated by the 'black' world of secret US military programmes in all its aspects and has recently published a book containing 75 patches, the kind worn on military uniforms. The book is called “I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me." Mr. Paglen says the title comes from a patch designed for the Navy Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 4, at Point Mugu, Calif. Its mission, he says, is to test strike aircraft, conventional weapons and electronic warfare equipment and to develop tactics to use the high-tech armaments in war. “The military has patches for almost everything it does,” Mr. Paglen writes in the introduction. “Including, curiously, for programs, units and activities that are officially secret.”

Accorduing to William J. Broad, writing in the New York Times: 'The classified budget of the Defense Department, concealed from the public in all but outline, has nearly doubled in the Bush years, to $32 billion. That is more than the combined budgets of the Food and Drug Administration, the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Those billions have expanded a secret world of advanced science and technology in which military units and federal contractors push back the frontiers of warfare. In the past, such handiwork has produced some of the most advanced jets, weapons and spy satellites, as well as notorious boondoggles.'

'This stuff is a huge industry, I mean a huge industry," says Paglen. "And it's remarkable that you can develop these projects on an industrial scale, and we don't know what they are. It's an astounding feat of social engineering."

See complete article here: Inside the Black Budget

JOHN "HOPPY" HOPKINS SHOOTS FROM THE HIP

Just when you think we've seen everything there is to see from the 1960s, along comes this superb book of photos by John Hopkins to add fresh lustre and give new insights to our vision of those times.

"Hoppy" as he is known by one and all, is of course now in the history books; in the words of Jonathon Green, in his book 'All Dressed Up', he was 'involved centrally in virtually every aspect of the counter-culture. '

A former nuclear reactor scientist, Hoppy became an inspiration, an instigator, an alternative impresario, a cause celebre. He was involved in the birth of the alternative scene in Notting Hill Gate, was the co-founder of Britain's first underground newspaper International Times, initially funded by Paul McCartney. He established, with Joe Boyd, the legendary UFO Club in Tottenham Court Road, where the house band was the Pink Floyd, where light shows were pioneered and where Hendrix strutted his stuff. He took acid in 1964, went to America, got busted in December 1966, served six months in Wormwood Scrubs. That's just the start of it.

His godfather gave him his first camera on the day he graduated from Cambridge in 1958 and he spent the next years learning the tricks of the trade. He arrived in London on January 1st, 1960, black and white camera in hand, to work as an assistant to a commercial photographer and by the following year was established as a Fleet Street freelancer, working for the Sunday Times and The Observer and also freelancing for Queen (a style magaxine of the day, for which he did one of the first feature ever in the UK on cannabis), Melody Maker (for which he shot jazz) and for Peace News and the CND magazine Sanity (for which he documented the protest movement against nuclear weapons).

His photographic career was to last just five years, from 1961 to 1966, but during this period he captured beautiful black and white images that are now considered iconic, of the music, culture and politics of the time. He then abandoned photography for life. Three years later, in 1969, he picked up his first video camera and became a pioneer in that field also - a story that has yet to be told.

For some thirty years or more, these photos remained lost and forgotten, were rediscovered by accident, and had their first-ever screening at the Photographer's Gallery in 2000. This book is their first proper publication - happily in an edition of great style and beauty, thanks to a great piece of design work by Sartoria Communications and a first rate production and publishing job by Damiani Editore in Bologna. The book, ironically or not, is discreetly sponsored by the jean company Lee.

Hoppy's great passion was jazz so it is appropriate that his wonderful intimate portraits of that world form the largest part of the book. The greats are here in force - John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Raasan Roland Kirk, Ornette Coleman and more - revealed in all their sartorial splendour. These are pictures of great class, style and distinction.

I particularly love the shot of Lee Morgan - The Sidewinder, with his herringbone suit, white shirt and slick hair, leaning back and blowing on his muted trumpet, holding a cigarette carelessly in his left hand, the smoke drifting upwards as the notes pour out - a gem.

The book opens with coverage of the emerging teen cultures: stunning studio and live shots of the Stones, some beautiful Beatles photos, Dusty Springfield and Marianne Faithful, Soho coffee bar scenes and bikers at the Ace Cafe.

His coverage of The international Potry Congress at the Albert Hall, on the 11th June 1965, features lively portrayals of the massed poets on the steps of the Albert memorial, Ginsburg in the nude, Burroughs staring into the camera as if he's trying to melt the lens. From there straight into CND marches, Martin Luther King at a 1963 Oxford Peace Conference, Malcolm X in Notting Hill, marches against racism and pics from Hyde Park's Speaker's corner.

The book concludes with a lengthy section showing the underbelly of Notting Hill - tattooists, fetishists, prostitutes - and the culture of old London - poverty and street kids, pearly kings and queens, bus and dole queues. A view of an England lost and gone.

The book contains short essays by record producer Joe Boyd, Barrie Miles (one of Hoppy's great collaborators of the period), the great jazz photographer Val Wilmer, and the photo curator Addie Vassie, who first brought Hoppy's pictures to light. They all speak fondly of him. His photos attest to his ability to put people at their ease. His talent shines out.

'From The Hip' [Damiani. 2008] ISBN 978-88-6208-018-7

INTERVIEW WITH HOPPY: NOW AVAILABLE AT The Generalist audio site.

BLOODAXE AND JANET FRAME: THE POETRY REVOLUTION

Very pleased indeed to mark the celebration of the 30th Anniversary of Bloodaxe Books, a marvellous success story in publishing, who have pioneered a revolution in poetry in the UK and beyond, producing popular works that reach out beyond the barricades to find an enthusiastic audience.

Founder Neil Astley gave this controversial speech at StAnza, which bills iteslf as 'Scotland's Poetry Festival in 2005, which captures the spirited defence of a new approach to poetry which Bloodaxe have fostered and nourished succesfully for three decades - a huge achievement.

This post was triggerd by by my friend Lin Heyworth, whose poems have appeared in The Generalist, who lent me Bloodaxe's recent publication of Janet Frame's poems. (See Previous Post CULT MOVIES: COEN BROS & VHS ADVENTURES on the movie of Janet Frame's life by Jane Campion)

I phoned Bloodaxe to ask for permission to reproduce a poem. Apparently these poems are handled by the Andrew Wylie Agency, to whom I would have to apply for permission - but I could reproduce six lines but not a complete six-line poem.

I was torn between two quotes but have chosen this extract from 'Some of My Friends Are Excellent Poets.'

Poetry has not room for timidity of tread
tiptoeing in foot prints already made
running afraid of the word-stranger glimpsed out of the corner of the eye
barking in the wilderness. Poetry is the time for the breaking of habits good or bad
a breaking free of memory and yesterday
to face the hunting that is.

(the column width on this blog doesn't allow lines 3 and 4 to stretch out to their full extent)

Most poetry I find hard to comprehend. Janet Frame's work speaks to me.

THE MILITARY ENTERTAINMENT COMPLEX

'Using the shareware tools, the Marines rewrote the code for the commercial game DOOM II. Instead of employing fantasy weapons to face down monster-like characters in a labyrinthine castle, real-world images were scanned into the game’s graphics engine along with images of weapons such as the M16(a1) rifle, M-249 squad automatic weapon, and M-67 fragmentation grenades. In place of the monster characters, 3D scans were done of GI-Joe action characters. The game was also modified from its original version to include fighting holes, bunkers, tactical wire, “the fog of war,” and friendly fire.'

- Tim Lenoir and Henry Lowood

'Speaking about the big-budget, live-action blockbuster Transformers (2007), Ian Bryce, one of its producers, characterized the relationship this way, "Without the superb military support we've gotten… it would be an entirely different-looking film… Once you get Pentagon approval, you've created a win-win situation. We want to cooperate with the Pentagon to show them off in the most positive light, and the Pentagon likewise wants to give us the resources to be able to do that."
-Nick Turse 'The Golden Age of the Military-Entertainment Complex' (March 2008) [Anti-War.Com]

CREATED BY SOLDIERS. DEVELOPED BY GAMERS
'In July of 2002, the Army turned on the servers for the America's Army game and watched as thousands of gamers rushed to download our America's Army: Operations RECON version. Since then, more than 9 million players have registered to join the America's Army experience. These players have participated in over 205 million hours of online play exploring Soldiering as members of elite U.S. Army units. These devoted fans catapulted America's Army into the top five online action games at its launch and have kept America's Army in the top ten on the charts ever since.'
- Letter from Leadership.
[The game is intended as a recruiting device.]

What ya need is what they sellin'
Make you think that buyin' is rebellin'
From the theaters to malls on every shore
Tha thin line between entertainment and war
Rage Against The Machine - 'No Shelter'


Back in 1961, in his farewell speech, US President Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the military-industrial complex. In a famous quote, he said:

'Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry...we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

'This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

'In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

'We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.'

Nick Turse's recently published book The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives' was reviewed in 'The Pentagon is Everywhere' by Noah Shachtman, a post on the excellent Wired blog DANGER ROOM: What's Next in National Security. The book was was less enthusiastically reviewed by the Chris Barsanti on the excellent Pop Matters site. Also see extract from the book on TomDispatch.com

Turse writes: 'Looking at the situation in 1970, almost 10 years after Eisenhower's farewell speech, Sidney Lens, a journalist and expert on U.S. militarism, noted that there were 22,000 prime contractors doing business with the U.S. Department of Defense. Today, the number of prime contractors tops 47,000 with subcontractors reaching well over the 100,000 mark, making for one massive conglomerate touching nearly every sector of society, from top computer manufacturer Dell (the 50th-largest DoD contractor in 2006) to oil giant ExxonMobil (the 30th) to package-shipping titan FedEx (the 26th).... But the difference between now and then isn't only in scale...Pentagon spending is reaching into previously neglected areas of American life: entertainment, popular consumer brands, sports. This penetration translates into a remarkable variety of forms of interaction with the public.'


















This post was inspired initially by this diagram from the Near Future Laboratory website. The diagram is appended to a downloadable pdf of a keynote talk delivered at the 2006 ACM SIGCHI International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology, 14-16 June 2006, Hollywood, California.

Read this exceptional paper -
THEATERS OF WAR: THE MILITARY-ENTERTAINMENT COMPLEX
Tim Lenoir and Henry Lowood/Stanford University, which begins:

'War games are simulations combining game, experiment and performance. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has been the primary proponent of war game design since the 1950s. Yet, commercial game designers produced many of the ideas shaping the design of military simulations, both before and after the advent of computer-based games.

'By the 1980s, the seeds of a deeper collaboration among military, commercial designers, the entertainment industry, and academic researchers in the development of high-end computer simulations for military training had been planted.

They built “distributed interactive simulations” (DIS) such as SIMNET that created virtual theaters of war by linking participants interacting with distributed software or hardware simulators in real time. The simulators themselves presented synthetic environments—virtual worlds—by utilizing advances in computer graphics and virtual reality research. With the rapid development of DIS technology during the 1990s, content and compelling story development became increasingly important.

'The necessity of realistic scenarios and backstory in military simulations led designers to build databases of historical, geographic and physical data, reconsider the role of synthetic agents in their simulations and consult with game design and entertainment talents for the latest word on narrative and performance. Even when this has not been the intention of their designers and sponsors, military simulations have been deeply embedded in commercial forms of entertainment, for example, by providing content and technology deployed in computer and video games.'

They conclude that: 'Military technology, which once trickled down to civilian use, now usually lags behind what is available in games, rides and movie special effects.'


One of the hotbeds of military/entertainment research is the Institute for Creative Technologies in Los Angeles. Their website reads: 'Collaborating with our entertainment industry neighbors, we are the leaders in producing virtual humans, computer training simulations and immersive experiences for decision-making, cultural awareness, leadership and health. Engaging and effective. Powerful and portable. Our innovations help save lives, resources and time.'

'ICT was established in 1999 with a multi-year contract from the US Army to explore a powerful question: What would happen if leading technologists in artificial intelligence, graphics, and immersion joined forces with the creative talents of Hollywood and the game industry? The answer is the creation of engaging, memorable and effective interactive media that are revolutionizing learning in the fields of training, education and beyond. We are leaders in an international effort to develop virtual humans who think and behave like real people. We create tools and immersive environments to experientially transport participants to other places.... Our work has made such an impact, that our founding contract was followed up in 2004 with a new five-year commitment to allow us to continue our innovative work.'

Leonard and Lowood report that in August 1999 the Army pledged '$45 million to the University of Southern California over the next five years to create a research center [ITC] to develop advanced military simulations....The idea for the new center...reflects the fact that although Hollywood and the Pentagon may differ markedly in culture, they now overlap in technology. In opening the new Institute for Creative Technology Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera said, “We could never hope to get the expertise of a Steven Spielberg or some of the other film industry people working just on Army projects.” But the new institute, Caldera said, will be “a win-win for everyone.”

Check out this 2003 story from DocBug:Intelligence, media technologies, intellectual property, and the occasional politics: 'The CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC) is working to develop training simulations with the help of the Institute for Creative Technologies, a center within the University of Southern California that specializes in combining artificial intelligence, virtual reality and techniques from the videogame and movie industries to create interactive training simulations. The company recently received accolades for their "Full Spectrum Warrior" project, which was designed as a training aid for the US Army but has also lead to a commercial videogame for the X-Box.'

FATHER OF LSD ALBERT HOFMANN DIES AGE 102

ALBERT HOFMANN 1 January 1906 – 29 April 2008
(Source: Dean Becker's page)

When Albert Hofmann turned 100 - an occasion marked by a huge symposium in Basel - Craig S. Smith of the New York Times interviewed him at his 'modernist home on a grassy Alpine hilltop' about his life and times, including, most famously, his discovery of LSD and his first experiences with it April 1943.

He said of this: "Immediately, I recognised it as the same experience I had had as a child."

'As the years accumulate behind him, Mr. Hofmann's conversation turns ever more insistently around one theme: man's oneness with nature and the dangers of an increasing inattention to that fact.

"It's very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature," he said, listing to the right in a green armchair that looked out over frost-dusted fields and snow-laced trees. A glass pitcher held a bouquet of roses on the coffee table before him. "In the big cities, there are people who have never seen living nature, all things are products of humans," he said. "The bigger the town, the less they see and understand nature." And, yes, he said, LSD, which he calls his "problem child," could help reconnect people to the universe.

'Rounding a century, Mr. Hofmann is physically reduced but mentally clear. He is prone to digressions, ambling with pleasure through memories of his boyhood, but his bright eyes flash with the recollection of a mystical experience he had on a forest path more than 90 years ago in the hills above Baden, Switzerland. The experience left him longing for a similar glimpse of what he calls "a miraculous, powerful, unfathomable reality."

"I was completely astonished by the beauty of nature," he said, laying a slightly gnarled finger alongside his nose, his longish white hair swept back from his temples and the crown of his head. He said any natural scientist who was not a mystic was not a real natural scientist. "Outside is pure energy and colorless substance," he said. "All of the rest happens through the mechanism of our senses. Our eyes see just a small fraction of the light in the world. It is a trick to make a colored world, which does not exist outside of human beings.

'He became particularly fascinated by the mechanisms through which plants turn sunlight into the building blocks for our own bodies. "Everything comes from the sun via the plant kingdom," he said.'

Full text here: Nearly 100, LSD's Father Ponders His 'Problem Child' Craig S. Smith [New York Times 7 Jan 2006]

Source: The old Grow-A-Brain Albert Hofmann collection

An excellent report on the Basel conference: 'LSD: Problem Child and Wonder Drug', an International Symposium on the Occasion of the 100th Birthday of Albert Hofmann.

'During a press conference on Friday, Hofmann revealed that he was told by Nobel-prize- winning chemist Kary Mullis that LSD had helped him develop the polymerase chain reaction that helps amplify specific DNA sequences.

'In his presentation, artist Alex Grey noted that Nobel-prize-winner Francis Crick, discoverer of the double helical structure of DNA, also told friends he received inspiration for his ideas from LSD, according to news reports.

'The gathering included a discussion of how early computer pioneers used LSD for inspiration. Douglas Englebart, the inventor of the mouse, Myron Stolaroff, a former Ampex engineer and LSD researcher who was attending the symposium, and Apple-cofounder Steve Jobs were among them. In the 2005 book What the Dormouse Said, New York Times reporter John Markoff quotes Jobs describing his LSD experience as "one of the two or three most important things he has done in his life." [see link below]

'Asked if the world needs his invention, Hofmann said he hoped that the Basel LSD symposium would help create an appropriate place for LSD in society.

"I think that in human evolution it has never been as necessary to have this substance LSD," said Hofmann. "It is just a tool to turn us into what we are supposed to be."

Full text here: LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug?' by Ann Harrison [Wired. 16 June 2006]

Collage of LSD blotter art. Text and image from this great Neurophilosophy blog

Erika Dyck, a professor of medical history at the University of Alberta, investigated the work of a pioneering group of Canadian psychiatrists who in the 1950s and 60s used LSD to treat alcoholic patients. She has uncovered research papers describing studies in which single doses of the hallucinogenic drug were an effective effective treatment for alcoholism, and has interviewed patients who participated in the clinical trials documented in the papers.

{Her findings were published here: ‘Hitting Highs at Rock Bottom’: LSD Treatment for Alcoholism, 1950–1970 Dyck Soc Hist Med.2006; 19: 313-329

Some of the papers found by Dyck were authored by Humphry Osmond, the controversial British psychiatrist who first used the term ‘psychedelic’ at a meeting of the New York Academy of Sciences in the early 1950s, and who gave Aldous Huxley the dose of mescaline which gave the writer the inspiration for his book The Doors of Perception.

In one of the studies, conducted in 1962, 65% of alcoholic patients given a single dose of LSD stopped drinking for at least one-and-a-half years, compared to 25% of control patients who received group therapy and 12% of another control group given traditional forms of therapy which were popular at the time.

“The LSD somehow gave these people experiences that psychologically took them outside of themselves and allowed them to see their own unhealthy behavior more objectively, and then determine to change it,” says Dyck. “[It] appeared to allow the patients to go through a spiritual journey that ultimately empowered them to heal themselves, and that’s really quite an amazing therapy regimen.”

'Most of the studies uncovered by Dyck were later discredited because they did not involve randomized, controlled clinical trials. Nevertheless, Dyck says that the use of LSD was not, as many people believe, on the fringes of biomedical research but instead was a legitimate branch of psychiatry which was promising and encouraging. She says that the use of LSD by members of the anti-war counterculture in the 1960s, and its subsequent criminalization by the government made research into its effects unpopular. This glut in research into psychotomimetic drugs lasted for decades, and it is only recently that biomedical research into LSD and related substances has resumed.'

See related story: LSD May Shed Hippie Image With Swiss Medical Study (Update1) by Dermot Doherty [Bloomberg. 1 May 2008]

FURTHER LINKS:

See: THE VAULT OF ALBERT HOFFMAN. Probably the best single resource site for Albert Hofmann on the web, part of the atonishing Erowid site

The entire text of Hoffman's memoir 'LSD: My Problem Child' is on line at the Psychedelic Library. See Chapter 8 about his meeting with Aldous Huxley.

Trip of a lifetime: How LSD rocked the world:It's the psychedelic drug that inspired Hendrix and The Beatles - and shaped the music, art and literature of a generation. As the world bids farewell to the bicycling Swiss chemist who created LSD, John Walsh explores his mind-altering legacy. The Independent 1 May 2008

LSD is the latest trend in Lebanon's drug scene by Hala Alyan. [Ya Libnan 9 May 2008]

'LSD has not so much flooded the mainstream drug market in Beirut as quietly become accessible to choice participants, mostly university students between the ages of 17 and 22.

'Rolling a cigarette as she spoke, the girl said that when she takes acid with her group, it feels like they are "in the Sixties, like we're starting our own revolution." She's happy to keep Beirut's new wealth of LSD under the radar. "All the people who want to take tabs and go clubbing just don't understand it."

THE GENERALIST ARCHIVE: Previous LSD posts:

HARVEY MATUSOW 3: 1960-1966

INSIDE DOPE: OPERATION JULIE REVISITED

LSD and THE BROTHERHOOD

What the Dormouse Said: Counter-Culture and Computing

VANITY FAIR GOES GREEN 3

As is becoming traditional at The Generalist: a review of the annual 'Green Issue' of Vanity Fair, an interesting mainstream barometer of front-running concerns and issues, containing the following pieces:

'Industrial Revolution: Take Two' a profile of William McDonough, by Matt Tyrnauer. This is the most extensive piece I have yet seen in print on McDonough, an extremely influential and important figure in the new industrial revolution of green, energy efficient, low carbon technologies.

His ideas are captured in an important book 'Crade to Cradle: Remaking The Way We Make Things', written with Michael Braungart. [North Point Press. 2002], which is, incidentally, manufactured from fully-recyclable plastic resins.

The book's central premise is the idea of "planned nonobsolescence": all things manufactured should be designed from the outset with the intention that they will eventually be recycled, either back to the soil, harmlessly, or into some other product. In their world WASTE EQUALS FOOD.

McDonough is an American architect who was born in Tokyo and grew up in Hong Kong, Canada and the US; Braungart is a German chemist who was a founder member of the Green Party. Their company advises corporations and governments how to implement "cradle to cradle solutions" and are currently designing master plans for the development of seven Chinese cities. Their alluring vision is of cities which are like dense "forests" 'with each building supporting - literally - farmland made of native soil. McDonough has lifted up the earth and put it several stories above the streets.'

"China is going to house 400 million people in the next 12 years, so imagine that," says McDonough. "You know, it's like rebuilding the entire United States in seven years - all the housing here. They've made brick illegal in 174 jurisdictions, because they're afraid of losing all their soil and burning all their coal making brick. So we have to look at new materials; we have to look at new startegies.

[The majority of quotes and ideas in the article you will also find in the video of McDonough's stirring presentation at the 2005 TED (Technology Education Design) conference, a wonderful source of fresh thinking and new ideas]

McDonough and Braungart were selected as one of the 'Heroes of the Environment' in Time magazine's special issue [Oct 29 2007] which is now online.

This issue of Vanity Fair also carries a piece on the greenest museum ever built - the new California Academy of Sciences building in Golden Gate Park - designed by Renzo Piano. It has a 2 1/2 acre living roof and will open on Sept 27, 2008.

Monsanto's Harvest of Fear by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele is a first-rate piece of extensive investigative journalism into the venal behaviour of one of the world's most rapacious corporations, who are buying up the world's seed banks and trying to control the world's food supply. They have undercover teams harassing farmers across America. This is essential reading. For those only familiar with the GM activities of Monsanto, this article will bring you up to speed on Monsanto's dark history.

Founded in 1901 by John Francis Queeny, 'a tough cigar-smoking Irishman with a sixth-grade education', who began by manufacturing saccharin, the nascent enterprise was kept afloat by one loyal customer - a new company in Georgia called Coca Cola. Monsanto then began manufacturing vanilla, caffeine, drugs used as sedatives and laxatives and, in 1917, started making asprin and soon became the largest maker worldwide. When World War I cut off its supply of Europedan chemicals, the company began manufacturing its own and became a leading force in the chemical industry as a result.


Queeny's only son Edgar took over the company in the 1920s and he expanded it into a global powerhouse producing a huge number of products including fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides. 'For many years Monsanto produced two of the most toxic substances ever known - polychlorinated biphenyls, better known as PCBs, and dioxin. Monsanto no longer produces either, but the places where it did are struggling with the aftermath, and probably always will be.'

One example of their plant in Nitro, West Virginia, which ran from 1929-1995. In 1948 the company began to make here 2,4,5-T, a powerful herbicide which creating dioxin as a by-product. On March 8th, 1949, a container cooking upa batch of the herbicide exploded. Court records indicate that 226 plant workers became ill as a result. In the 1960s, the plant went on to produce Agent Orange, 'the powerful herbicide which the US military used to defoliate jungles during the Vietnam War, and which later was the focus of lawsuits by veterans contending that they had been harmed by exposure.' See extensive Wikipedia article here.

Stealing Weather by William Langewiesche is an extraordinarily interesting piece on weather modification, both the history of the subject and the extensive use to which the Chinese are now putting it.


















According to the Chinese Meteorological Administration (CMA), local weather- modification offices all over this vast country now have 39,000 field operatives, equipped with 7,113 anti-aircraft cannons and 4,991 truck-mounted rocket launchers.

'In 2006 they fired a million rounds at the weather, and launched 80,000 rockets. For the most ambitious efforts, they had access to 35 specially equipped airplanes, which that same year flew 590 sorties, dispensing 26,158 pounds off dry ice, 1,487 pounds of silver iodide, and 2,300 gallons of liquid nitrogen. All together the operators claimed to have covered more than a third of China's landmass, excluding Taiwan.'

See also: China Leads Weather Control Race by Brandon Keim. Wired. November 14, 2007

[Always found it fascinating that Kurt Vonnegut's brother Bernard, was a cloud-seeding pioneer who worked at General Electric alongside Vincent Schaefer and Irving Langmuir, from whom the initial idea came that led to Kurt's novel 'Cat's Cradle'. 'Vonnegut came across a story of how Langmuir, who won the 1932 Nobel Prize for his work at General Electric, was charged with the responsibility of entertaining the author H.G. Wells, who was visiting the company in the early 1930s. Langmuir is said to have come up with an idea about a form of solid water that was stable at room temperature in the hopes that Wells might be inspired to write a story about it. Apparently, Wells was not inspired and neither he nor Langmuir ever published anything about it. After Langmuir and Wells had died, Vonnegut decided to use the idea in his book Cat's Cradle' [See complete Wikipedia entry here]

Also two excellent articles on the moves by Russia and the US to exploit energy reserves in the Arctic: The Arctic Oil Rush by Alex Shoumatoff ('If Russia starts tapping the Arctic deposits, it jmay become the world's dominant energy supplier') and The Edge of Extinction by Michael Shnayerson (a recent $2.66 billion oil-and gas drilling lease sale will further doom the US polar bear).

BLOG UPDATES: JOY DIVISION & THE LEWES ARMS

NEW ON THE AUDIO GENERALIST
Interview with filmmaker Grant Gee about 'Joy Division: The Movie' which is due to go on general release in May.









Grant's work is consistently interesting and innovative and includes a number of experimental works, a huge back catalogue of pop videos and the standout Radiohead documentary 'Meeting People Is Easy'. He was also Director of Photography on 'Scott Walker: 30 Century Man'.


Read my excited early review of the film from December 2007: JOY DIVISION: THE DOCUMENTARY



Updates:
Named Observer Film of The Week and reviewed by Phillip French
See: Unknown Pleasures by Jon Savage in The Observer
See: Controlled Chaos: From Dostoevsky to Burroughs to pulp sci-fi, Ian Curtis devoured offbeat literature. Jon Savage, writer of a new film about Joy Division, explores the impact of the front man's reading on the band's lyrics


It is a year since the Harveys was restored to our local pub the Lewes Arms which meant that Saturday April 26th was a day of much mayhem and madness, including a beer race and torchlit march. See the latest photos on my Lewes Arms blog, which provides a detailed account of a campaign that is probably the biggest pub protest in British history. There is now a full-page on Wikipedia documenting the dispute. Thanks to whoever put it up there.

HARVEY MATUSOW: A LIFE IN FIVE POSTS

Harvey Matusow

October 3, 1926 – January 17, 2002

A WORK IN PROGRESS

Early last week, I was a guest of the ladies in charge of the Special Collections of Sussex University Library. A discussion is going on between us about the future of my own HQ INFO Archive and broader issues. You can access their Special Collections catalogue here. Of immediate interest to me was the fact that they house, alongside the world-famous Mass Observations Archive and a substantial Bloomsbury collection, the personal archive of Harvey Matusow – a man whose name was familiar to me and someone who I believe I met in London in the early ‘70s. He was certainly a counter-culture figure of note. I browsed though his books and became very curious to find out more about the man. Coverage of his life and times is scattered across the Internet so am attempting here to bring together what biographical details exists in a compact form to provide a clearer, richer and more coherent picture of the long and diverse life of the “trickster” figure that was Harvey Matusow. It’s an extraordinary story that deserves to be more widely known.

*

1926-1946

‘I was born and brought up in The Bronx in its more gentle and energetic years. It was The Bronx in transition from a rural farming area to 45 square miles of high-rise city. The money that passed hands and the deals which were made in 1926 in The Bronx probably created the most powerful political machine in The United States. It was the Bronx machine that got Al Smith the Democratic nomination for President in 1928, and it was The Bronx that gave us Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. I watched my father use the machine, a phone call here, a phone call there, and suddenly the laws and the rules vanished. Everyone and everything seemed to have a price tag. By the time I was ten, I could steal your purse or pick your pocket on the subway, and you'd never know it. The streets were the jungle, a more gentle jungle than today, but, a jungle nevertheless. You learned it's sounds, it's smells as well as every crack in the cement side walks. It was all busy detail, filing everything away for some future unseen unexpected confrontation or crisis. Always shooting angles, the ricochet life style of a city kid.’

His parents Sylvia (nicknamed “Kitty”) and his father Herman had both arrived separately in the United States in 1906. Kitty was an observant Orthodox Jew; Herman a ‘short, well-dressed man [who] possessed a hair-trigger temper, a good sense of humour, and a passion for playing cards.'

‘He worked as a singing waiter in Coney Island [with Jimmy Durante, says Wikipedia] and, during World War 1, served as a quartermaster sergeant in the US Army. During the 1920s, he built a chain of cigar stores in good Manhattan locations…but he lost everything in the 1929 crash. “During the depression,” Harvey recalled, “Herman’s card earnings kept us alive.”

‘Harvey had one sibling, his brother Danny, three-and-a half years older, his best friend protector and hero, with whom he shared a bedroom… Both brothers attended Bronx public schools. But Harvey, despite his quick intelligence, proved a consistently poor student, a circumstance he later attributed to dyslexia (a condition largely unknown at the time).

‘He did develop “street smarts.” At the twelve, he went to work in the neighbourhood for Phil the Bookie. As a messenger and gofer, he saw bribes given to police officers and drew the lesson that government was corrupt.'

In August 1942, Danny enlisted in the Army Air Force and was called to active duty in March 1943 and sent to England. Harvey joined the army in November 1943. In deptember 1944, Danny was reported missing in action after his B-17 aircraft was lost in a daylight bombing raid over Nuremburg. Harvey was called to active duty on October 31, 1944, trained as a rifleman and sent to Europe, where he saw a minimum of combat. On V-E Day in the spring of 1945 he was in Paris and was then assigned to a US-sponsored college in Biarritz where he worked as a photographer for an army public relations unit.

In 1946 he was transferred in Mainz where he worked interrogating German prisoners. One prisoner, who had kept a detailed diary and map, enabled him to locate his brother’s burial site in a church cemetery in a suburb of Nuremburg. (His brother was later reburied in a military cemetery in France.)

He was ordered to return to the US in July and discharged from the Army on August 3, 1946.

Sources:
Lichtman, Robert M. and Cohen, Ronald (2004). Deadly Farce: Harvey Matusow and the Informer System in the McCarthy Era. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252028864.

Kahn, Albert Eugene (1987). The Matusow Affair: Memoir of a National Scandal. Moyer Bell Ltd. ISBN 0918825857.

Matusow, Harvey (1955). False Witness. Cameron & Kahn.

Italic quotes from ‘Stringless Yo-Yo’, Matusow’s title for his unfinished autobiography, sections of which are available on the web.

HARVEY MATUSOW 2: 1946-1960

Harvey Matusow
1946-1960

‘Matusow did time for telling the truth about having lied'
Emile de Antonio, filmmaker.

'Back in New York after the war, he worked various jobs (including as an agent for Dean Martin) while he drifted towards Greenwich Village hootenannies, the folk music revival and the American Communist Party.' WNFU's Beware of the Blog

His first introduction to the political left came in November 1946 when he was invited to a neighbourhood party for members of the American Youth for Democracy (AYD), which a year later would be listed as a Communist front. He enjoyed the camaraderie and the folk, union and protest songs he heard sung. He joined AYD and became the club’s education and social director. [Lichtman]

‘It didn't take long before I joined the A.Y.D., went to meetings, got petitions signed…The fear and hysteria of McCarthyism hadn't begun, nor had the Cold War moved into top-gear. Communists, communism didn't frighten me or generate any feelings of hate in me. Just fought a war allied with them. Met quite a few of them in France. They were all anti-Fascists and fought and died. Didn't understand much of what they were about, but those who I'd met, I liked. I was hungry and hooked, wanting to explore this world, to relate to and try to better understand these people. It wasn't difficult at all for me to get involved in the Left Wing. American Youth for Democracy - what could be nicer than that?’

1949-51: ‘Was part of the folk music revival of the 40s. Was a Broadway agent, worked for the agency that handled Dean Martin before he joined Jerry Lewis. As a hopeful comic, lived the night club life…Won subscription drive for Daily Worker and got free trip to Puerto Rico…met and married Kay, a working journalist for the Black newspaper The Amsterdam News’.

‘By 1950, he either sensed an opportunity for money and fame, or (according to him) needed to protect his own ass, so he contacted the FBI and began his four year long career as a paid informer for anyone in need of an anti-Communist accuser with bona fide red street cred… [he] ultimately destroyed the lives of hundreds of innocent Americans, communists and non-communists alike.’ WNFU's Beware of the Blog

1950-52: Contacted the FBI and became an informer. The Korean War began. Kay and I separated and I left New York heading for San Francisco…[but] truck broke down in Taos, New Mexico, Went to art school, ran local pool hall, became gofer for Mable Dodge and Freida Lawrence. Got called to active duty in Air Force.

1951-53: The McCarthy years. Worked my way out of US Air Force into a job as an investigator for The Ohio Un-American Activities Committee. Became the ‘darling of the Hearst press, the China lobby, the Justice Department and Congressional Committees on both the House and Senate side. Spied on trade unions. Left Ohio and became assistant editor of ‘Counterattack’, the blacklisting newsletter that also created the blacklist bible ‘Red Channels’. Involved in actors clearances in New York and Hollywood.

In 1952, went to work for Senator McCarthy…After election, went to work for [him] with specific purpose to help undermine public trust in the New York Times.

[He] once reported that 126 Communists worked in the Sunday Department of the New York Times even though the total number of employees was 100. [Wikipedia]

In 1952 he went to work for Senator Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn who put him on their payroll and encouraged his tendency to create lists of communists out of thin air. Among Matusow's targets during this period of time were The New York Times and The Girl Scouts.
WNFU's Beware of the Blog

1953-54: Married and divorced twice to McCarthy financial supporter, Arvilla Peterson Bentley. Moved into her large mansion [in Washington DC]. Suddenly find myself, a high school drop-out, in a large mansion with an upstairs maid, a housekeeper, a cook, a butler/chauffeur, a gardener, a part time laundress. It was a madness out of my league, caught up in the power vortex of America. That was the insanity of it all.

1954: Returned to New York where I buried myself in writing poetry, doing some off Broadway Theatre, and some up-tight, sometimes feeble, attempts at stand-up comedy…Did some radio and realized that I was now blacklisted, and found it almost impossible to find theatre work…Was baptised in Mormon Church (Oct. 1, 1954). Attempts to get book, ‘Blacklisting Was My Business’, published.

1954-1955: I received a message from and called Albert Kahn of the book publishing firm of Cameron & Kahn. They had heard about the book I was writing, and seemed interested in publishing it. Returned to New York, immersed myself in a Greenwich Village apartment. Wrote the book ‘False Witness’, recanted my testimony, and was overwhelmed beyond any expectation of the results of my recantation and the book. I was alone like I had never known aloneness…Estranged from most of my family (except my mother and father), and perhaps eight of my forty-two uncles and aunts. Conflict and question, "Why did I do it?" (I am amazed now that I am still alive, for I fully expected to be shot dead every day of that period.)

1954-1956: I was in such disrepute, I stopped going to Mormon Church. Was afraid to test them on forgiveness…Started to hang around my old Greenwich Village haunts: The White Horse, Louie's, and the Limelight Coffee House. Met and married third wife, Ellen Raskin… an artist doing book and record jackets and illustrations…Employment was difficult. I would get job and lose it within days. Started selling Book of Knowledge. Sold my first to unemployed actor [Jason Robards].

In 1954, either because he felt remorse over the destruction he caused, or because he sensed another quick buck, he came clean on his years of lying and perjury with his book False Witness. In it, he truthfully accused Cohn and McCarthy of keeping him on the payroll as a paid witness and a professional liar. For once, Matusow was telling the truth, but Roy Cohn didn't see it that way. Cohn accused him of lying in the book, and in the ensuing trial, Matusow was convicted of perjury and sentenced to five years in prison... As a professional liar, Matusow had been the toast of the town, but for finally telling the truth, he was imprisoned. It was then that he was dubbed "The Most Hated Man in America" by The National Enquirer, The Baltimore Sun and other papers. WNFU's Beware of the Blog

1956-1957: Trial in New York Federal Court. My word against Roy Cohn. Convicted and sentenced to five years in Federal Prison for saying that Cohn, when he was Assistant U.S. Attorney, had suborned perjury. The irony of it all was that I had committed countless acts of perjury, and the government tried and convicted me of telling the truth. Sent to prison. Made bail after three months in the Federal Penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pa. Ellen and I ended two-year marriage. My father died.

[April 1st 1957]: Met fourth wife, Beatrice Swope Lysander. She was the best writer I have ever known. She was hanging out at Louis' Tavern, under The Circle In The Square Theatre, and was with our mutual friend, Steve McQueen. Steve and Lee Marvin and I used to deliver TV sets for Jerry Francis from his shop on west 10th street…Bea was also a "den mother" to many of the Village poets of the Beat Generation (Howard Hart, Sy Krim, Jack Micheline and a few others).

It was 1957, and the Warren Supreme Court, using me as a prime reason, upset almost every rule and law that the government was using to persecute the left. They refused to grant me a hearing on appeal, and I went back to prison.

On the eve of my return to prison, Bea and I went to see the Henry Fonda movie, Twelve Angry Men, and after the movie went to have a farewell party at the journalist Bill Dufty's house. Bill and his wife Maley, and the singer Billie Holiday threw a farewell party. Billie and I shared notes about Federal prisons. [Bea, Bill & I] went to the Federal Court House where I surrendered to the U.S. Marshall, and went off to prison.

1956-1960: General reflection on prison life. My work in the athletic department. Captain of the tennis team and the volley ball team. I treated prison like the university I never attended. I devoured books, attended lectures given by Bucknell University professors, painted over 200 canvases. Produced and directed four plays: ‘Stalag 17’, ‘Waiting for Godot’, ‘Mr. Roberts’, and ‘Arsenic & Old Lace’(with two Mafia types playing the old ladies). Reflections also on Frank Costello, the so-called head of the "Mafia", who I got to know well while at Lewisburg, and who I got to see after release in New York.

1956-1960: The day Wilhelm Reich died he was in the next cell…In the general population he was known as "The Sex Box Man", and the folk tales regarding his orgone box were more then surreal.

Sources: Italic quotes and bold chronological entries: from the ‘Stringless Yo-Yo’. Chronological entries edited to correct mistypings and misspellings, to shorten it and, in some cases, to make it read more fluently. Other sources indicated.

HARVEY MATUSOW 3: 1960-1966

Harvey Matusow
1960-1966

1960-1963: Rebirth, out of prison. Life exciting, trying to make up for the years I'd been away. My Generation, the Beat Generation, had made it and I wasn't there…The fact that in prison I had done poetry and jazz with some of the best jazz musicians in the country didn't seem to carry any weight with me. Bea's seventy year old mother, Mary Morrison, was bringing me beat poetry from City Lights Bookstore in her native San Francisco. … Found work as book designer and Art Director for scientific publishing house, Academic Press. Used my position as art director to buy printing from Alger Hiss… Never thought him guilty, and told him so. He accepted a dinner invitation from Bea, and we had a great evening sharing Lewisburg and McCarthy experiences. It was during this period that the seeds were sown for the undercurrent of my life's work: serving those in prison and those facing prison, and those trying to survive after release. With a few others, organized Jailhouse Anonymous - a quiet, one-on-one service organization which takes no money for services.

1963-1966: The Art World. With friend Bill Dufty we founded monthly art magazine, ‘The New York Arts Calendar’, [which we] continued to publish for three years. Immersed in the glitter and glamour of the fine art world, and discovered it has as many morality glitches as the streets and politics, and in many ways it seems to have more corruption - too much big money involved. Wrote, edited and published fine art book, ‘The Art Collector’s Almanac’. It got me an invite to Lyndon Johnson's White House…Attempted to get a passport so as to travel to Europe on art-related business, but the State Department said no. Called Abe Fortas… one of the first to read the galley proofs on ‘False Witness’ prior to its publication [and he] got the State Department to back down.

Both the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations turned down my proposal for help in completing a history of art exhibition - the follow-through of the already published volume - and said that they would underwrite it if I were to withdraw from the project. I became angry and destructive. I convinced myself that regardless of what I did or might accomplish, society would never forgive me for my role in McCarthyism. My bitterest act, greater than any I had ever known. I took all the research I had collected, and rented a fishing boat at Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn. Went out into the ocean and dumped it all: catalogues, photos, slides. To this day, the greatest regret of my life.

1965: My perception of a Christian society unable to forgive propelled me deeper into the counter culture of the 60's and 70's. Was deeply involved in the first "Underground" newspaper, ‘The East Village Other (EVO)’.Discovered Tim Leary and legal LSD, began taking trips and wandering into the unknown. In order to punish the United Fruit Company, helped create the hype that smoking banana peels would get you high.

'Will bananas get you high? Of course not. The whole thing was a hoax first publicized in the Berkeley Barb in March 1967. The wire services, and after them the whole country, fell for it hook, line, and roach clip. "Smokeouts" were held at Berkeley. The following Easter Sunday, the New York Times reported, "beatniks and students chanted 'banana-banana' at a 'be-in' in Central Park" and paraded around carrying a two-foot wooden banana. The Food and Drug Administration announced it was investigating "the possible hallucinogenic effects of banana peels."

'The outcome of the FDA study I have not been able to discover. However, in November 1967 researchers at New York University reported that a chemical analysis of banana peel had found no intoxicating chemicals and that the high was mainly psychological. It was obvious at the time, at least to some of us, that the whole thing was a put-on. I'll bet even the pranksters at the Barb didn't expect suckers to be falling for it 35 years later.'

Source: The Straight Dope

1965-1966: Bea and I separated… Norman Mailer and I to get to know one another. I had met him at Sy Krim's 40th Birthday party. Liked him, trusted his non-Christian soul. He had a directness and clarity which made me comfortable. When he ran for Mayor of New York a few years later, I co-chaired the Norman Mailer for Mayor Committee in London which was called The Mailer Mafia Snow Removal Trust. We had a big London bash to raise funds, and got Christine Keeler of Profumo fame to auction her bra.

Reconnected with Bobby Kennedy, who I hadn't seen since McCarthy Committee days. LSD still legal, and arranged for Kennedy to get acid for trip prior to his holding hearings on subject. He wanted to know what it was, etc. Connected thru Walter Bowart of EVO, also we gathered much information for the Committee regarding youth and drugs etc.

‘We talked for several hours in his Central Park West apartment one morning in late 1966 or 1967. I was working on a study of LSD users and he was then proselytizing for acid with the same religious fervor he’d sold subscriptions to The Daily Worker in his Communist days, had been an anti-Communist in his informer days, and then an anti-anti-Communist in his post-informer days.

‘That afternoon, I described the encounter to Irwin Silber, editor of Sing Out! magazine. “Do I know him?” Irwin yelled, even though it was just two of us in the room “That sonofabitch turned me in!”

‘Later that day, I saw a musician friend, Hedy West, and I told her about the coincidence of my morning meeting with Matusow and Silber’s having been one of his victims. “Harvey Matusow turned my father in,” Hedy said."He testified that my father was organizing Communist Boy Scout troops in Georgia. They’d never met, but that didn’t matter to Matusow or the people he was working for. My father’s response was, ‘Where I was in Georgia, 12-year-old boys weren’t playing Boy Scout; they were working in the mines.’”

- Bruce Jackson: ‘Harvey Matusow: Death of A Snitch’
The main part of the article is an interview with filmmaker Emile de Antonio whose ‘Point of Order’ is considered the best documentary on McCarthy.
.’

Also began working with Deputy Mayor Marcus of New York, working on the problems of runaway teenagers, who we started to call Hippies who were flooding the streets of Greenwich Village. Set up a hot line with others to deal with people who were having bad acid trips.

1964-1966: Following my "normal" life pattern of when in doubt, when at the emotional bottom, laugh your way back to balance. During my witness days I always had an outlet in night clubs doing sleezy stand-up comedy. Now did it again four to five nights a week on MacDougall street in the Village. Spent a lot of time with Dick Gregory, and many lonely nights at The Improv.

Reconnect with Andy Warhol, who I hadn't seen since pre-prison days when I was married to Ellen, and with him almost pulled off a hype on David Suskind. Suskind was doing a TV special on Beatnik artists. Using a Russian accent, from Andy's phone, I convinced Suskind that I was a Russian poet. Would have made the programme, but, one of the group who was in on the hype couldn't contain the secret [and] Suskind found out.

Started to make films. Worked with Yoko and her husband Tony Cox and film maker Peter Goldman and Emile d'Antonio. Worked with d'Antonio and Mark Lane and helped him mimeograph his book on Kennedy assassination [but] no one wanted to publish it.

Lane and d'Antonio invited me to a party in Great Neck, New York. Pete Seeger was the main attraction for this fund raiser for some decent humanitarian planetary cause. I was bored and tired of the rejection, and was reluctant to go. Mark and d'Antonio convinced me that it would be alright. I had not seen Pete Seeger since the McCarthy days, when I was the main cause of his blacklisting. I had no desire to confront him, but, I put my guard down and went. Pete was gracious, loving and forgiving. His wife was not, nor were most of the guests, who were horrified at my presence. The final straw, I left the USA, vowing "never to return."

Sources: Italic quotes and chronological entries: from the ‘Stringless Yo-Yo’. Chronological entries edited to correct mistypings and, in some cases, to make it read more fluently.

PETE SEEGER FOOTNOTES:

While working as an informant, Matusow provided information against folksingers. Pete Seeger's band the Weavers [who] went from a hit record with ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ to being blacklisted and finding no work. Seeger later went to prison over his testimonies in the HUAC related witch-hunts but also forgave Matusow for his youthful mistakes and noted that Harvey never did more than cost Seeger a few jobs. ("The Lion Sleeps Tonight" was known at the time as "Wimoweh." Pete Seeger did not go to jail, though he was convicted for Contempt of Congress and issued a jail sentence.) [Wikipedia]

'[He] became a member of the Weavers, whose version of "Goodnight Irene," by Leadbelly, was, for thirteen weeks in 1950, the best-selling record in America. The Weavers quit playing in 1952, after an informant told the House Un-American Activities Committee that three of the four Weavers, including Seeger, were Communists. (Seeger knew students at Harvard who were Communists and, with the idea in mind of a more equitable world, he eventually became one himself.) Following the informant's testimony, the Weavers found fewer and fewer places to work.' [Source: ‘The Protest Singer: Pete Seeger and American folk music’ by Alec Wilkinson [The New Yorker 17^th April 2006]