mdrgdao

Photo

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 17:09:23 +0100

Bic biro pen drawing on 1954 Russian envelope by Mark Powell

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 17:04:57 +0100

Bic biro pen drawing on 1954 Russian envelope by Mark Powell

The Last Meals Of Innocent Men An emotional new ad campaign...

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 20:12:33 +0100

(Photo: Amnesty International ) Cantu's last meal: Fried chicken, rice, plantains, soda. His last request -- for a piece of bubble gum -- was reportedly denied.

(Photo: Amnesty International ) Jones' last meal: Steak and eggs, baked potatoes, toast.

(Photo: Amnesty International ) Jones' last meal: Steak, fried eggs, toast with jam, milk.

(Photo: Amnesty International ) Spence's last meal: Fried chicken, french fries, chocolate ice cream, soda, tea and coffee.

(Photo: Amnesty International ) Willingham's last meal: Ribs, onion rings, tater tots, enchiladas, two slices of pie.

The Last Meals Of Innocent Men

An emotional new ad campaign from Amnesty International asks its viewers to stomach a hard truth — images of the last meals of wrongly executed American prisoners.

As part of an initiative to abolish capital punishment completely, the influential human rights group has highlighted the unintended consequences of imposing the death penalty by focusing on a handful of prisoners who were eventually presumed innocent after they were executed. Since 1973, 142 death row inmates have been exonerated of the crimes for which they were sentenced to die, the Death Penalty Information Center reports. Some of those people spent decades in prison before their innocence was proven.

Meal 1: Ruben Cantu (Texas) was charged with capital murder at 17 years old for shooting a man during a robbery. The one witness to this crime admitted later on that he was pressured by police to identify Cantu as the criminal. He told the police twice that Cantu was not the shooter. However, Cantu was still executed in 1993.

Meal 2: Leo Jones (Florida) was charged with the murder of a police officer in Florida. Although he said that said he was coerced into confession after hours of interrogation. The police officer and the detective involved in his case, were forced out of uniform for ethical violations a few years after his’ conviction.

Jones was executed in 1998.

Meal 3: Claude Howard Jones (Texas) was sentenced to death in 1989 for shooting and killing Texas liquor store owner. However, the recent DNA tests on the strand of hair that was used as the only physical evidence against him was proved not to belong to him.

“Knowing that these DNA results support his innocence means so much to me, my son in the military and the rest of my family. I hope these results will serve as a wake-up call to everyone that serious problems exist in the criminal justice system that must be fixed if our society is to continue using the death penalty,” - Jones’ son, Duane Jones

Jones was executed in 2000.

Meal 4: David Spence (Texas) was charged and sentenced to execution for the murder of three Texas teenagers. There was no physical evidence against him and both the homicide detective and police lieutenant that were on his case did not believe Spence to be the criminal. The prosecution solely relied on the testimony of other prison inmates in their case against Spence,

He was executed in 1997.

Meal 5: Cameron Willingham (Texas) was convicted of murdering his three children in a 1991 house fire . Four national arson experts have concluded that the original investigation in the case was flawed, while an independent investigation into the case concluded that the prosecution centered its argument on arson theories that have since been repudiated by scientific studies.

Willingham was executed in Texas in 2004

THE STUNNING, STUDENT-MADE SHORT THAT GOT HOLLYWOOD’S...

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 20:14:06 +0100

THE STUNNING, STUDENT-MADE SHORT THAT GOT HOLLYWOOD’S ATTENTION

BY: RAE ANN FERA

Every once in a while a wunderkind director comes along who, with heaps of talent and bootstrapping, creates something with visual effects that seem to be straight out of Hollywood. The Purchase Brothers did it when they created their alien invasion short Half-Life: Escape from City 17 on a measly $500. Then came Fede Alvarez’s Panic Attack, a similarly destructive (and low budget) short in which giant robots eviscerate Montevideo. Now, 22-year-old German film student Kaleb Lechowski has attracted big-league attention with his riveting short R’ha.

More…

Out Now - ‘Oh Geezus Its Christmas Again’ OG’z...

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 19:50:40 +0100

Out Now - ‘Oh Geezus Its Christmas Again’ OG’z Mixtape

My Westside Horizon by ANTWON.

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 19:52:47 +0100

My Westside Horizon by ANTWON.

recording in the studios of mr aeks, megabusive, and barry bones...

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 19:21:45 +0100

recording in the studios of mr aeks, megabusive, and barry bones

dedicated to all womyn, mothers, and daughters

full file download

http://www.divshare.com/download/15861974-210

To celebrate the game’s tenth anniversary, Complex Magazine...

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 13:51:20 +0100

To celebrate the game’s tenth anniversary, Complex Magazine presents The GTA: VICE CITY Soundboard.

Photograph of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry by Pogus Caesar from the book...

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 20:00:43 +0100

Photograph of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry by Pogus Caesar from the book Muzik Kinda Sweet.

- The Upsetter The Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry story...

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 16:00:42 +0100

- The Upsetter

The Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry story narrated by Benicio Del Toro?? I’m sold.

Hackney, London, July ‘12 - AlexTiernan

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 11:56:38 +0200

Hackney, London, July ‘12

- AlexTiernan

facebook.com/TeamBolt2012

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 19:56:28 +0200

facebook.com/TeamBolt2012

“We were born in the provinces affected by the war. Our mothers...

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 16:00:19 +0200

“We were born in the provinces affected by the war. Our mothers were fleeing with us on their backs…and then at the age of 4 or 5 we would hear gunshots and such things.So this made us also turn to a more aggressive style. We smash!” - Presidente Gasolina

Notting Hill, London, ‘12 - AlexTiernan

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 11:57:23 +0200

Notting Hill, London, ‘12

- AlexTiernan

Games time is over. Now goin for £4

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 23:52:17 +0200

Games time is over. Now goin for £4

It seems somehow appropriate for its DIY ethics that the seminal...

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 23:12:00 +0200

It seems somehow appropriate for its DIY ethics that the seminal moment in the history of modern British urban music is a four-part YouTube clip. Ripped from a home-made, long out-of-print DVD called Conflict, one cameraman films a tiny box-room full of young grime MCs, performing on pirate station Deja Vu 92.3 FM, high up on a rooftop in Stratford – only yards from what is now the Olympic site.

Filmed on a summer evening in 2003, over 40 minutes, 15 or so members of legendary crews Roll Deep, East Connection and Nasty Crew squeeze into the makeshift studio – an all-star cast akin to getting the Sex Pistols, the Clash and the Buzzcocks on the same bill. This was, in fact, grime’s 100 Club moment – and thanks to the internet, we can all pretend we were there. As Roll Deep’s DJ Karnage builds momentum with the instrumentals, the microphone is passed from MC to MC, from legends Wiley and D Double E to a 16-year-old Tinchy Stryder, to forgotten early heroes Demon and Sharky Major. The video is notorious for its dramatic climax, when a 17-year-old Dizzee Rascalnearly comes to blows with an MC who was then as hotly tipped as he was, Crazy Titch. The whole cast is a litany of possibility, of foiled and realised ambition; the future of British pop music at the crossroads. Eight years later, Dizzee is a global superstar with four No 1 singles to his name; Crazy Titch is serving a life sentence for murder.

Seen from this distance, the poignancy lands with the clinical punch of a Wiley snare: Dizzee Rascal now wants nothing to do with the music that first made him famous – he won the Mercury prize for Boy in Da Corner only months after this video was recorded. In 2011, Dizzee is collaborating with Shirley Bassey and Shakira; shadow-boxing backstage at Hyde Park with Prince Harry, while Titch resides at his grandmother’s pleasure.

The videos, with a million or so YouTube views, findable by Googling Roll Deep Conflict, are a window on to an extraordinary era in British musical history. In one 10-second bit of hosting, Wiley accounts for the now-vanished trinity that created grime, and gave the British pop zeitgeist its platform: radio, raves and riddims. “This is Deja 92.3 FM … hold tight the raving massive, don’t forget Eskimo dance … hold tight Danny Weed, hold tight Target”. This was a time when pirate radio was a hub for a whole community – the geographical horizons as narrow as the musical ones were broad: “That’s where I’m from, Bow E3,” Wiley sprays into the mic. “I’m like the 38 bus, because I never turn up.”

It also tells a story about grime at its musical peak: a stage before, or perhaps exactly when, the ego of MCs began to take over. Prior to that, anyone with a mic in their hand was first of all answerable to the beat, to the producer-DJ auteur, and pirate radio was all about rolling out the instrumentals – building a steady, if restless momentum. The MC was a performer, but also a host: a master of ceremonies, but also, in the parasitic sense, possessed by those extraordinary early grime beats and their macabre, avant-garde minimalism. As Wiley spits, “I’m futuristic, quantum leaping/there’s no defeating/E3 tiger – see me creep on the riddim like a spider/kill them with a 16-liner”. You wouldn’t know it to hear 2011’s shiny electro collaborations with the likes of Calvin Harris, but grime spitting is supposed to be twice the speed of hip-hop rapping: typically, you had just 16 bars to show your skills, before passing the mic to the next MC – a rule that made grime the most thrilling, ADD-friendly onslaught of a genre. Andy Warhol should count himself lucky he got 15 entire minutes to make an impact.

As the energy mounts, Crazy Titch is bopping with cartoonish energy, face screwed up at the sheer meanness of the track playing underneath, his blitzkrieg of bars including the lyric “Draw for me, you’ll be on the 10 O’Clock News” seconds before the fight with Dizzee breaks out. The music cuts out abruptly, and amid the clamour of raised voices and bravado we hear “step outside!”, “leave it, man”. Wiley is immediately in between the two callow young MCs – the godfather of grime, the paternal statesman who cares more for the scene than his own career. They are pulled apart, and everyone spills out on to the rooftop, silhouetted against the east London gloaming, as friends attempt to calm them down.

Three years later, Titch was sentenced to life imprisonment for his involvement in the murder of 21-year-old Richard Holmes, a senseless crime supposedly connected to a disrespectful grime lyric. In that Deja FM set, Crazy Titch is captivating, going 100 miles per hour, arms pumping, grinning ear to ear – it’s not a stretch to suppose that the gleeful, relentless energy he displays on the mic came from the same place as his manic, unhinged tendencies.

“Forget all this, man, forget all this,” one MC is heard saying after the fight breaks out, attempting to defuse the tension. He meant they should forget the beef – and soon enough, they did. But a great deal else was forgotten with it.

Photo: Crazy Titch, by Peter Beste

I love you Bolt. Never doubted you for a second

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 15:20:14 +0200

I love you Bolt. Never doubted you for a second

Photo

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 15:58:15 +0200

Downfall (by colint544) Demolition of Red Road

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 11:47:36 +0200

Downfall (by colint544)

Demolition of Red Road

Video

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 19:57:22 +0200