THE GUARDIAN: “[T]he book’s just the start of a conversation. I don’t know what you do about private education or private fuckin’ anything – I’m not a bloody politician. I want to address the alienation and sense of despair that you see all around us. Everyone’s fucked off, everyone’s had enough, so it don’t matter to me how much people have a go at me, because I live in the world and walk around, and people are going, ‘Well done, Russell, well done, son.’ I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready to die for this.” He finally takes a breath. […]

Laura Poitras’ documentary about Edward Snowden. Out October 24th. THE GUARDIAN: Poitras, the first journalist contacted by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, mirrors her topic. She rarely appears on news programs or chat shows. She is a mysterious character in her own movie, heard more than she is seen. But surreptitiously, Poitras has been a commander of a stream of disclosures for 16 months that have forced the NSA into a new and infamous era. Citizenfour demonstrates to the public the prowess that those of us who have worked with her on the NSA stories encountered. Her movie, the […]

  EDITOR’S NOTE: As you’ve probably heard by now, Malala Yousafzai, aka The Bravest Woman In All Of Islam, has won the Nobel Peace Prize. And deservedly so. To mark this auspicious occasion we are re-running the angry open letter to the Taliban we wrote for Philadelphia Magazine in the wake of their failed attempt to assassinate the then-14-year-old Malala by sending two goons to board her school bus and shoot her in the face. Like Ghandi or Martin Luther King or the Dalai Lama — men who have renounced violence, who come in the name of love and mercy […]

From the new and excellent Manipulator (Drag City). No Philly date on the horizon. [makes Sad Keanu face]

WARPAINT L-R: Jenny Lee Lindberg, Stella Mozgawa,Emily Kokal, Theresa Wayman by ROBIN LAANANEN BY CLAYTON RUSSELL Warpaint is four L.A. ladies from the canyons of their own self-discovery, constantly morphing and re-inventing themselves, veering between straight up rock, atmospheric art rock and hypnotic dance music. For the past year they have been criss-crossing the globe in support of their acclaimed four-years-in-the-making self-titled sophomore LP,  which was produced by Flood (PJ Harvey, Nick Cave, NIN) and mixed by Nigel Godrich, aka Radiohead’s George Martin. In advance of their Union Transfer show tonight with Guy Blakeslee of The Entrance Band opening, we […]

  FRESH AIR In the 1950s, four people — the founder of the birth control movement, a controversial scientist, a Catholic obstetrician and a wealthy feminist — got together to create a revolutionary little pill the world had never seen before. They were sneaky about what they were doing — skirting the law, lying to women about the tests they performed and fibbing to the public about their motivations. “They absolutely could’ve been imprisoned for some of the work they were doing,” journalist Jonathan Eig tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “These guys are like guerrilla warriors — they’re always having […]

  EDITOR’S NOTE: As you have no doubt heard by now Ben Affleck and Sam Harris/Bill Maher got into a shout-y, headline-making debate about Islam on the latest installment of Real Time With Bill Maher. You can watch the exchange below, then read Sam Harris’ parsing of what went down. SAM HARRIS:  After the show, a few things became clear about Affleck’s and Kristof’s views. Rather than trust poll results and the testimony of jihadists and Islamists, they trust the feeling that they get from the dozens of Muslims they have known personally. As a method of gauging Muslim opinion […]

NEW YORK TIMES: There are countless churches but not much openly gay life in this city by the banks of the Tennessee River. So when Benjamin Newbern, a onetime field organizer for the American Civil Liberties Union, convened gay residents and those he calls “straight allies” for dinner one recent evening, it was a radical act. Over pizza in the back room of a local restaurant, a college student, Jacob Ezell, said his mother worried “it would destroy our family” if his father found out that he is gay. A nurse who gave her name only as Cassandra said she […]

Crash, aka Christopher Richard, may be named like a demolition derby king, but he sings like an angel. His day job is celestial back-up singer/percussionist for Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes but his nights belong to Crash. Earlier this summer he released Hardly Criminal, his debut solo album, on Community Records. You don’t need to read his bio (SEE BELOW) to grok the sad-eyed beauty of this song, but it sure explains a lot, not the least of which is this: A NOLA native having fled Katrina, Crash was literally living in a cave in Laurel Canyon when he […]