RADIO TIMES 12 years have passed since the first detainees arrived at Guantanamo Bay US Naval Base on Cuba. Since then, 779 people have been held at the base’s notorious detention camp. Today, 158 inmates still remain imprisoned there. But in December, a Congressional deal made it easier for Guantanamo’s prisoners to be transferred to their home nations. MARINE MAJOR GENERAL MICHAEL LEHNERT was in charge of establishing the detention facility back in 2002. Now retired, he says Guantanamo should never have been opened. CAROL ROSENBERG is Military Affairs Correspondent at the Miami Herald. Carol has covered Guantanamo since the […]
EARLY WORD: ‘The Day We Fight Back’ Is Coming
THE DAILY DOT: The date is set: On Feb. 11, the Internet will finally formally protest the type of spying revealed by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. It’s called “The Day We Fight Back.” A host of familiar sites and companies with an activist bent—including Reddit, Mozilla, and BoingBoing—are leading the charge, and organizers expect plenty more to join in the coming weeks. It’s reminiscent of two years ago, when the above companies, plus heavy hitters like Wikipedia and Google, went on “strike” to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill many feared would have made […]
DR. DOG: Love
The Dog makes a two-night stand at the Electric Factory on Friday January 31st, with The District opening, and Saturday February 1st, with the mighty Saint Rich opening. Look for our interview with the Dog’s Toby Leaman later this week on a Phawker near you!
MAGNET: The Third Coming Of Edward Sharpe
EDITOR’S NOTE: An excerpt of this story first posted July 26th 2013. To mark the occasion of Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros frontman Alex Ebert winning a Golden Globe just a few moments ago, here is the complete story. Twenty-First Century ambassadors of peace and magic or dopey Christian hippie cult on wheels? MAGNET goes to Bonnaroo to find the answer and bears witness to the third coming of Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros. BY JONATHAN VALANIA It’s a few clicks before zero dark thirty backstage at Bonnaroo’s Which Stage where Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes are […]
CINEMA: To Siri With Love
HER (2013, directed by Spike Jonze, 125 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC The movies have asked us to honor many unconventional romances — men and mermaids, men and androids, young men and senior citizens, and women with monsters. Movies demand we suspend our disbelief and it is almost magical how we can project our emotions into such scenarios but Spike Jonze’s Her, which chronicles an affair between Joaquin Phoenix’s lonely Theodore and the voice on his phone, asks us to suspend our belief over what may be a romantic bridge too far. In a future that appears […]
REALITY CHECK: Bully Is As Bully Does
MOTHER JONES: On Thursday, New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie held a press conference to address allegations that his appointees orchestrated a dangerous traffic jam for political revenge. Christie maintained that he was deceived by a member of his “circle of trust” and noted that he had fired his deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, who was implicated in the scandal. He insisted that he had not known that Kelly ordered the traffic problems until the news broke on Wednesday. But many commentators have wondered if this whole episode—whether Christie was in the know or not—has bolstered the […]
CLOUD CULT: All The Things We Couldn’t See
Just announced: Cloud Cult play the Prince Theater Friday, April 18th.
EXPLAINER: Why Should I Care About The NSA?
Here’s why.
MEDIA: Citizen Ailes
NEW YORK MAGAZINE: In the summer of 2008, to cement their ties to their new home, [Roger Ailes, the Vader-like overlord of Fox News and his wife Elizabeth] bought the local newspaper, the Putnam County News & Recorder. Founded in the mid-nineteenth century as the Cold Spring Recorder, the weekly newspaper was like the community itself: an artifact of a bygone age. The previous owner and publisher, Brian O’Donnell, kept production methods antique. In a one-room office, housed in a former barbershop on Main Street, staffers laid out the paper with scissors and glue. “It covered the 4-H Club […]
SECRET COLORS: It Can’t Be That Simple
Teaser for the Feb. 4th digital release of the Positive Distractions Part I EP. Part II to follow on April 29th. MORE
IOWA 2016: Chris Christie’s Bridge To Nowhere
DAILY NEWS: THE GEORGE Washington Bridge officially became New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s “Bridge to Nowhere” yesterday. In a devastating blow to the political prospects of now arguably ex-GOP front-runner for the 2016 presidential nomination, leaked emails and texts revealed that a high-ranking Christie aide deliberately called for crippling traffic problems in Fort Lee, N.J., after that city’s Democratic mayor refused to endorse the GOP governor’s 2013 re-election. “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” Christie’s deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, wrote in August to David Wildstein, a top Christie appointee on the Port Authority of […]
CINEMA: The Day The Clown Cried
Illustration by DREW FRIEDMAN SPY MAGAZINE: To artists and intellectuals, the twentieth century has posed no questions more vexing than these: First, can art make sense of the Holocaust? And second, why do the French love Jerry Lewis? The first question can’t really be answered, at least not in the space allotted here. As for the second, it’s my own opinion that the French have confused sloppy, uneven filmmaking with Godardian anti-formalism. Regardless, raising these two issues on the same page is not just a pointless exercise in non-sequitur. Because Jerry Lewis, like Elli Wiesel and Primo Levi before him […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Masha Gessen is a prominent journalist who is also a lesbian and an outspoken LGBT rights advocate in Russia. After Russia passed two anti-gay laws in June, she decided it was time for her, her partner and their children to leave. In late December, they moved to New York. “The only thing more creepy than hearing someone suggest the likes of you should be burned alive is hearing someone suggest the likes of you should be burned alive and thinking, ‘I know that guy.’” That’s what Gessen recently, referring to an experience she had with one of […]