Instead, I give you this: My punk-rock makeover, courtesy of iVillage, inspired by Merry's efforts over at Cranky Fitness. I plugged in an old photo from 2004 when I was about 50 pounds thinner. Like, you can see some actual bone structure, woo!

Heh. I look like I should be a member of Jem & the Holograms.

Aside from the indigo hair, this isn't too far a cry from my general look in 2000.

Jem Robinson has not only submitted work for the AOI Image 32, but also for a minatures exhibition at the Cupola Gallery in Sheffield. Artists were asked to submit work that is 10 cm squared, cubed or smaller.

more details about the exhibition can be found at cupolagallery.com or to see more work e-mail chelsie@jellylondon!

michaela@jellylondon

we are proud to announce that 2 of our lovely illustrators are going to be featuring in the AOI's Image 32 Best Of British Contemporary Illustration between the 30th July - 27th

August at The London College of Communication;

the Awards Night is taking place on the 29th July!

Caroline Tomlinson & Jem Robinson are both featuring in the exhibition;

Jem has submitted a piece entitled "Protest" and Caroline has submitted "Happy Birthday Jelly" which won the Silver Award for Best Self-Promotion (it was for our first birthday last year!)

For more information on the exhibition please visit TheAOI.com and for examplesof Jem's submitted work please visit www.theaoi.com/artist/jemmarobinson

michaela@jellylondon

JAMMU: Pro-Pakistan terror outfit Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) has suffered the most among the militant groups in Jammu and Kashmir as it lost 34 top commanders and 307 cadres in gunbattles with security forces in 2007.

"Hizb received a major jolt in 2007 having lost 34 top commanders and 307 cadres in the encounters in 2007," top police officers said today.

As a result, "Kashmir militancy's backbone has been broken and Hizb cadres have gone into hibernation after getting demoralised," they said.

Hizb tops the list of 13 terror outfits whose top commanders were among those killed, they said.

These outfits included Lashker-e-Toiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), Al-Badr, Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islami (HuJI), Tahreek-ul-Mujahideen (TuM), Al-Umar, Jamail-ul-Mujahideen (JuM), JK Freedom Force (JKFF), Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), Hizb-e-Islami (HeI) and Al-Barq.

A total of 77 top militant commanders have been killed by security forces till November this year and Hizb tops the list followed by LeT, JeM, HuJI, Al-Badr, HuM, JuM, TuM, HeI and Al-Barq, according to police data.

The list of militants killed includes 17 commanders of LeT, 13 of JeM, 10 of HuJI and three of Al-Badr.

During past two years of Congress rule in Jammu and Kashmir, 182 commanders were killed and of these 75 commanders were of Hizb followed by 49 of LeT, 18 of JeM, 11 of Al-Badr and 20 of HuJI.

In 2006, out of 105 commanders killed, Hizb lost 41, LeT 32, HuJI 10, JeM five and Al-Badr four.

In 2005, Hizb lost 31 top commanders, followed by 12 of LeT, nine of Al-Badr, seven of JeM, two commanders each of HuM and HuJI, besides one each of TuM, JuM, HeI and Al-Barq.

This year Hizb lost one operation chief commander, four divisional commanders, seven district commanders, nine tehsil commanders, 12 area commanders and company commander, the officers said.

Top among those killed in 2007 include Bilal Afghani, chief commander of Al-Badr on December 3 in Budgham followed by Qari Umar (deputy chief of HuJI for J-K), Abu Hamza (chief operation commander of JuM), Qasim Bhatti (chief operation commander of LeT), Iajaz Ahmed Chopan (chief operation commander of HM), Aby Tallah (operation commander of LeT's Jammu region), Mohammad Younis (commander-in-chief, HMPPR) and Mohd Khalid-ur-Rehman (LeT's India operations head).

In 2004, Hizb had lost three chief operation commanders, Gazi Shahab-uddin, Gazi Naseer-uddin, Saif-ul-Islam, besides deputy chiefs, Abbas Malik, Shakeel Ansari, intelligence chief Tari Aziz.

"Due to crumbling of the top structure of militant outfits like Hizb, LeT, JeM, lower militant cadres are on run in J-K," the officers said.

Building new bases

The Islamist terror network has quietly spread to States where its presence was least expected.
K. ANANTHAN
Misleading calm

T.S. Subramanian
in Chennai

WHAT next? This question seems to haunt many of the 83 Al Umma cadre who were released from the Central Prison in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, after the judgment came in the Coimbatore serial bomb blasts case. Although Special Court Judge K. Uthirapathy sentenced the 83 to varying terms of imprisonment, they were set free because their period of detention during trial had equalled the term of imprisonment they were sentenced to undergo.

Tamil Nadu Police officials say that the Al Umma men want “to settle down, start a new life and not to have any confrontation” and genuine organisations such as the Released Prisoners’ Welfare Board are trying to rehabilitate them. However, the activities of a new organisation called the Charitable Trust for Minorities (CTM) has come under surveillance. The CTM has been collecting funds to rehabilitate the 83 Al Umma men and to help the families of other cadre who are still in prison. Police sources allege that the CTM is receiving funds from Saudi Arabia, from where a number of Muslim extremist organisations in India, including the Muslim Defence Force operating in Tamil Nadu, are being financed.

The police have also put another organisation, “Manitha Neethi Pasarai” (Organisation for Human Justice), under the scanner. Mohammed Ali Jinnah is its State president. Together with two other organisations, the National Development Front of Kerala (NDF) and the Karnataka Forum for Dignity (KFD), it has formed a charitable trust to finance their activities. “They are trying to be aggressive. They held a conference in Bangalore a year ago. Manitha Neethi Pasarai is active, trying to organise demonstrations for reservation for Muslims and on other issues. It is under a close watch,” said a police officer.

An organisation called the South India Council, set up ostensibly to do “dawa” work (propagation of Islam) in the southern States, collapsed. In its place sprouted the Popular Front of India, an umbrella organisation of Manitha Neethi Pasarai, the KFD and the NDF. “The chairmen of these organisations are former SIMI [Students’ Islamic Movement of India] zonal presidents and their members are ex-ansars [full-time members],” the police officer said.

Top police officers concede that “although everything is calm on the surface in Tamil Nadu, there are deep undercurrents of Muslim extremism”. Former zonal (Tamil Nadu) presidents of SIMI have started a number of front organisations. They could not continue in SIMI because they had crossed the upper age limit of 30 years for membership. “All these organisations are alive in one form or the other. Nobody really went away [from SIMI]. These organisations’ objective is to establish Islamic rule in India,” a police officer said.

For instance, M. Ghulam Ahmed, former zonal [Tamil Nadu] SIMI president, founded the Manitha Neethi Pasarai. When he was expelled recently from the Manitha Neethi Pasarai, he went on to establish another organisation, the Darul Islam Foundation Trust. M.S. Jawahirullah, who is now a top leader of the Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam, was a State SIMI president. Another Tamil Nadu SIMI president, S.M. Baucker, is now the general secretary of the Tamil Nadu Thouheed Jamat. Ibn Saudh, who was the first president, in 1982, of the Tamil Nadu unit of the Jamaati-Islam-Hind, the parent organisation of SIMI, is now the president of the All-India Milli Council. Mohammed Ansari, who was a SIMI ikwan (supporter), is now Al Umma general secretary.

He was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment in the Coimbatore blasts case. Ansari’s brother-in-law, Shahjehan, who is an ex-ansar of SIMI, is one of the top leaders of Al Umma. Tajudeen, Al Umma treasurer, was also a SIMI ansar.

SLEEPER CELLS
A police officer declined to rule out the possibility of the existence in Tamil Nadu of sleeper cells of organisations such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Jaish-e-Mohammad, the Jammu and Kashmir National Liberation Front and the Harkat-ul-Jihad. He said: “The people in these sleeper cells come [to Tamil Nadu] as students, patients in need of treatment, cultural performers and as visitors. They continue to stay here. These sleeper cells can be activated any time. These organisations have deeply infiltrated Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Tamil Nadu is heading towards that.”

SIMI came in for adverse notice first in Tamil Nadu in 1999 when it published a propaganda organ called “Seithi Madal” (News Letter), which often carried articles describing terrorist activities in Kashmir as “another Kosovo liberation movement” or “Chechnya movement”. What made the police sit up was the publication of a map of India without Jammu and Kashmir and an article titled “The Return of the Ghaznavi Calendar” in the Seithi Madal. Since the publication “contained seditious and incriminating material, which will also create communal disharmony”, the police registered a case and arrested those who ran the “Seithi Madal”.

After SIMI was banned in 2001, the police arrested 21 SIMI members in Tamil Nadu. Four of the 120 “ansars” who attended a secret meeting at Athanwale in Gujarat a few months after the ban were from Tamil Nadu. They were arrested when they returned to the State. On January 26, 2006, when SIMI members met in Kerala, Syed Azeem of Pallapatti in Karur district, Tamil Nadu, who attended the meeting, was arrested. He is on bail.

Former SIMI members are now busy organising libraries and charitable trusts or doing “dawa” work. An organisation called “Baithul Marg” (a trust) was formed recently in Madurai. It runs a library. “Members of this trust are former SIMI members,” a police source said. A publishing firm called “Thinnai Thozhargal Pathippagam” (Bench friends’ Publishing Company) has published several books in Tamil.

Foreign agencies
According to top police officers, several foreign agencies based in Saudi Arabia are trying to infiltrate South India. They have funded not only individuals but extremist organisations in Tamil Nadu. For instance, Imam Ali, the prime accused in the case relating to the bomb explosion at the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) building in Chennai in August 1993 in which 11 persons were killed, was trained by the Hizbul Mujahideen. His training in Bangladesh was funded by agencies in Saudi Arabia. Abu Siddiqui of Nagore, Tamil Nadu, who was responsible for parcel bomb explosions at Nagore and is an accused in the case of the bomb blast at the Hindu Munnani office at Chintadripet, Chennai, was in touch with Saudi-based fundamentalist organisations. The police have not been able to arrest Abu Siddiqui yet. Thoufeek Chotu of Adirampattinam, near Thanjavur, accused in the bomb blast at Ghatkopar in Mumbai, is now on bail. He has launched an organisation called “Iraivan Oruvan” (There is only one God).

In November 2002, a special team of the Chennai City Police smashed a “budding” terrorist organisation called the Muslim Defence Force (MDF), which had planned to explode bombs in Tamil Nadu on December 6, the anniversary of Babri Masjid demolition. The MDF was originally founded in Saudi Arabia and had connections with the Lashkar-e-Taiba . Its 21 members, including important leaders such as Thoufeek and Zackria, were arrested. The MDF was founded in Tamil Nadu under guidance from Abu Hamsa of Hyderabad, who was a key accused in the Sai Baba temple blast case in Hyderabad. After the blast, Abu Hamsa fled to Saudi Arabia. Hamid Bakri, who married Imam Ali’s sister, was one of those who founded the MDF. He reportedly has links with Islamic fundamentalist agencies in Saudi Arabia.

Madrasas and Arabic colleges in Tamil Nadu have been infiltrated by Muslim fundamentalists from other States and countries, police sources say. These institutions are located at Vellore, Umarabad Kayalpattinam, Melapayalam and Kadayanallur. “Most of the teachers and students in these colleges are from Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat and also Nepal. The principal of one of the Arabic colleges is a Nepali Muslim,” said the police sources.

A London-based organisation called Hizb-ut-Tahiri, which has been banned in 50 countries, has fathered a movement called the Khilafat Movement in Tamil Nadu.

A top police officer was, however, confident that “the situation is under control”. He said, “We are keeping a tight watch on fundamentalist elements. Everything is under surveillance.”

‘Transit point’
By R. Krishnakumar
in Thiruvananthapuram

FOR the first few days during his fortnight-long interrogation in Thiruvananthapuram in April 2005, Maldivian national Ibrahim Asif behaved like a true professional. He spoke good English and seemed to know his way around the city, like many of his countrymen who take the hour-long flight from Male to Kerala every day and get ‘visa on arrival’. Since the mid-1990s the State had become a tourist destination and, more importantly, a health care centre for people of the small island nation.

Initially at least, Kerala officials said, Asif Ibrahim seemed well trained in the art of fudging answers and bewildering interrogators with religious rhetoric. “It was not Allah’s way to indulge in violence,” he would say at the end of every question. But from the sixth day onwards the truth began to come out “in reluctant bits”.

Ibrahim Asif had heard that explosives were easy to obtain in Kerala, where their use in granite quarries and for other industrial purposes was widespread. He had indeed been trying to procure ammunition and arms and was a member of a Maldivian Islamist group that had the support of similar organisations in Pakistan. The explosives were meant to blow up a mosque run by the Maldivian government, he told his interrogators, and the weapons were to try and “kill the Maldivian President”.

He kept in touch with members of his group, not by sending e-mail messages but by “saving them as drafts in his e-mail account” and letting his handlers open his account using a common password. He had been in contact with “friends” in Kerala and wanted to start a “brotherhood” of like-minded people in the State. The plan failed because he was intercepted by security agencies, he told his interrogators.

In September 2007, the Maldives witnessed its first ever terrorist bomb blast, in Male, and investigations showed that the man who triggered the explosive device had been in Thiruvananthapuram (from Colombo) barely six months after Asif’s arrest. He had the support of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operatives in India on his way to Pakistan.

In October 2006, soon after an Al-Badr operative, Mohammed Fahd, a Pakistani national, was arrested in Mysore on charges of planning an attack on the Vidhan Soudha in Bangalore and the Central Institute of Indian Languages in Mysore, police teams were in Kozhikode, recovering documents of his stay there a few months earlier and of his alleged connections with jehadi groups operating in Jammu and Kashmir. Fahd, the police learnt, was the son of a local resident, Abdulla Koya, who migrated to Pakistan in the early 1970s and settled in Karachi.

Before the bomb blasts in Mumbai, on a local train at Mulund, on March 13, 2003, intelligence officials had indicated that key operatives of the LeT, including its southern commander Muhammed Faisal Khan alias Abu Sultan, had visited Kerala on a fund-raising mission to support the Mumbai operation. Abu Sultan, who was killed in a police encounter after the blasts, came with a close associate of C.A.M. Basheer. The latter is a former president of SIMI who is a native of Kerala and a key terrorist operative who is now listed as absconding.

Records recovered during a police raid on SIMI’s offices in Kozhikode and elsewhere in northern Kerala in October 2001 indicated a huge inflow of funds from West Asia through hawala channels, often ranging “up to one lakh Saudi riyals a week”. The police also found propaganda material printed by a Kashmiri militant outfit, Tehreek-e-Hurriyat-e-Kashmir.

Basheer is a key suspect in a case filed in Ahmedabad in 1992 by the Central Bureau of Investigation under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA) and in another, relating to the March 2003 Mumbai blasts. He has been described as a “key fund raiser” and “recruiter” for several Islamist groups in the country and has allegedly trained several operatives from Kerala and other places in subversive activities.

According to the police, he hails from Aluva near Kochi. After his studies at the U.C. College there and at the Aeronautical Engineering College at Chalakkudy near by, he initially worked at a flying institute in Bangalore and then at the Mumbai international airport. In 1991, the police said, he suddenly came into prominence as a key organiser of the all-India SIMI conference held in Mumbai that year.

Basheer disappeared from India soon after the 1993 Mumbai blasts and security agencies believe he is in Saudi Arabia heading the Muslim Development Force (MDF), an organisation he floated in close association with the LeT. It is said to have its tentacles in many parts of India. Kerala itself has been relatively free of terrorist incidents of the kind witnessed in the northern States, except for a few minor bomb blasts – one at a bus station in Kozhikode and another on a boat in Beypore – and the periodic seizure of explosives from different parts of the State.

But it is increasingly being described as “India’s new terror hub”, a “sanctuary”, a “place of refuge” and a “quiet transit point” for terrorists. The reasons for this may be found in the operations of some virulently fundamentalist organisations in the State.

In the early 1990s, no sooner had the government imposed a ban on the Islamik Sevak Sangh (ISS, a sort of copycat version of the RSS, which too was banned in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition), than its chairman Abdul Nasir Maudany disbanded it. He then transformed his profile into that of a leader of a new, more moderate political party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

As Maudany dabbled in Kerala’s coalition politics, his PDP seemed to drift from its fundamentalist moorings because of political expediency. Subsequently, the party’s core Islamist cadre, among them several SIMI activists, regrouped under the banner of the National Development Front (NDF), which is today Kerala’s most high-profile militant Islamist organisation. It claims to be a socio-cultural organisation of the minorities.

Similarly, according to State police officials, most of the core operatives of the proscribed SIMI have floated a dozen new organisations within Kerala or become their members. Among the organisations are the NDF and the PDP and a series of fringe groups with names such as Muslim Youth Cultural Forum, Sahridaya Vedi, Karuna Foundation, Samskara Vedi, Solidarity Students Movement, and Movement for Protection of Islamic Symbols and Monuments.

In June last year, the State government filed an affidavit before the Justice B.N. Chaturvedi Tribunal considering the extension of the ban on SIMI (extended regularly every two years since 2001), in which it stated categorically that in addition to 12 organisations that former SIMI members were part of, they were also operating under the cover of a number of rural development and research centres, religious study centres and counselling and guidance centres.

It also stated that they continued to receive copious funds from West Asia and had strengthened their links with the LeT and other fundamentalist organisations in Kuwait and Pakistan. The government also named the key personnel engineering the regrouping of the SIMI cadre. Importantly, the affidavit said, SIMI had been organising regular indoctrination drives, particularly targeting young Muslims in the State, mostly college students.

The significance of these events is not in the changing profile of these organisations but in the persistent and widespread indoctrination of Muslim youth under an umbrella of virulent Islamist ideology that drew its strength, initially, from the lingering socio-economic problems in Kerala society, the post-1990 aggressiveness of Hindutva forces and later on from the anti-imperialistic, anti-globalisation sentiments that gained prominence in Left Front-ruled Kerala ever since the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Many such problems and concerns, though common to all communities in the State, were being increasingly sought to be projected as instances of discrimination against one community alone, with the clear objective of propagating a divisive fundamentalist agenda and setting the stage for the growth of radical Islamism.

Muslims form a significant proportion of the population in Kerala and the community has, from the time of Independence, tried to give expression to its need for recognition and development through its own political and social organisations. The Muslim League, importantly, used this as an opportunity to gain a prominent place in the State’s coalition politics, which satisfied a major psychological need of the community in the years after Independence.

But over the decades, the Muslim League, like many such political organisations that came in its wake, became the cause for much disenchantment because of its failure to find solutions to the community’s socio-economic backwardness. Though remittances from expatriates in West Asia provided temporary economic relief, in a way it only helped deepen the divisions within Kerala society. The Muslim political, social and religious leadership, which had traditionally been in the hands of a small group of rich trading and landholding familes, also increasingly began to face challenges from a lot of ordinary Muslims who had come up in the social hierarchy following the Gulf boom, gaining education and a better quality of life and exposure to religious and social trends in various West Asian nations.

It was into this confusing milieu that the new factor of pan-Islamic radicalism was being imposed. A senior Home Department official told Frontline: “It is from within the new generation of comparatively prosperous, educated young Muslims that the fundamentalist forces are finding new recruits. The real terrorist activity in Kerala is in the bombing of the minds of our young people.”

Taking root
By Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay
in Kolkata

THE violent agitation in Kolkata on November 21 by a section of Urdu-speaking Muslims, which required the deployment of the Army, serves as a reminder of how deeply Islamist militancy has infiltrated West Bengal, Kolkata in particular.

The protesters came together under the banner of the All India Minority Forum (AIMF), but the police suspect that Islamist militant groups such as the Harkat-ul-Jehadi-al-Islami Bangladesh (HuJIB) and some militant outfits from Uttar Pradesh with links to the banned SIMI played a crucial role in inciting the mobs. State Home Secretary Prasad Ranjan Roy, however, denied receiving any report on SIMI’s involvement.

“Staging demonstrations is not a new phenomenon in Kolkata, but the way it turned violent suddenly and inexplicably was ample evidence that a peaceful demonstration was not on the agenda of those behind the agitation. It was a clear effort to precipitate a law and order situation in Kolkata, using Taslima Nasrin’s visa extension controversy and the violence in Nandigram as excuses to ignite a communal conflagration,” a police source said.

So far the Muslim population of West Bengal has not voted en bloc on communal lines in elections. The division of the Muslim vote has been on political and ideological lines primarily among candidates of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Congress, the Trinamool Congress and the Forward Bloc. Extremist right-wing politics, whether Hindu or Muslim, has not found any large-scale support among the West Bengal electorate until now.

Not surprisingly, the present turmoil, created on relatively trivial issues, portends a sinister political game plan of polarisation of the Muslim vote on communal lines against the CPI(M)-led Left Front government. One cannot ignore the fact that for the first time a fundamentalist group like the Jamait-e-Ulema-i-Hind tried to get into the political bandwagon on the Nandigram issue.

It has been estimated that illegal Bangladeshi immigrants are in a position to influence the outcome in 18 per cent of the total number of Assembly seats in West Bengal, or 52 of the 294 seats. In the urban area, a sizable portion of the votes belong to non-Bengali, Urdu-speaking Muslims and they form a crucial factor in determining the winner in constituencies in and around Kolkata. The menace of communal politics, unless tackled politically by the saner elements among the political players, bodes ill for the State. Given the secular nature of West Bengal, the violence of November 21 was the first of its kind in the State, but police sources fear it may not be the last.

In spite of the dangers its geographical position poses, West Bengal is perhaps singular in the absence of terrorist strikes. The only time there was a terrorist strike in the State was on January 22, 2002, when the American Centre in Kolkata was attacked by armed militants linked to the HuJIB.

According to intelligence sources, the chances of a terrorist strike in the State remain doubtful, as any such act would endanger what is for the militants a convenient hideout and a relatively safe passage to and out of India. But the radicalisation of certain sections of the Muslim community by outside forces has already taken place, these sources say.

A.K. Maliwal, Director, Security, West Bengal, told Frontline: “Those who are seeking a safe shelter in Kolkata would also be looking to expand their base in the region; for that they would have to create conditions conducive to an unhampered stay. The larger the number of people that can be converted to their cause on this side of the border, the greater the security for them.”

The arrest of a leading member of the HuJIB in Lucknow in June provided further evidence of the presence of the outfit’s operatives in West Bengal. Jalaluddin Molla, alias Amanullah Mandal alias Babu Bhai belonged to South 24 Parganas district and is believed to have played a key role in the abduction of Parthapratim Roy Burman, the owner of the Khadim Shoe Company, in July 2001.

Bangladesh, an acknowledged international refuge of Islamist militants, shares a 4,095-kilometre border with India, 2,216 km of which is with West Bengal. Fencing of the border began a few years ago and has so far covered only a little over 500 km. Between August 2006 and April 2007, 10 militants belonging to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the Hizbul Mujahideen and the Jama’atul Mujahideen of Bangladesh were caught trying to cross over into West Bengal.

On August 14, 2006, the Border Security Force (BSF) caught two militants of the LeT and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) using the “cattle route” (through which cattle is smuggled across the border) to enter India.

In June this year, the Kolkata Police arrested three militants suspected of having ties with the HuJIB. Police sources said two of the militants confessed to receiving training in Pakistan.

More recently, three Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists arrested in Lucknow in connection with a plot to abduct Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, reportedly confessed that they tried to use the West Bengal-Bangladesh border to enter the country.

The Left Front government has repeatedly apprised the Centre of the situation. According to a police source, adequate measures are yet to be taken, both at the Central and at the State level, to deal with the problem. “We have the resources to deal with the problem, but identifying those resources and committing them for specific purposes is a problem,” the source said.

In that context, one has to take into account the 367-km riverine border that West Bengal shares with Bangladesh in the Sunderbans. According to informed sources, the water border is a vulnerable one and allows easy passage to armed militants.

“Until this year, the Centre has sanctioned 74 coastal police stations in States that have a coastline. Five of these have been sanctioned for the Sunderbans but not even one is operational as yet,” the source said. “As for the security network in West Bengal, the State government is addressing with great urgency any lacunae that might exist. Recently an e-mail threat to kill Pakistani cricketers touring India and to blow up the Eden Gardens cricket ground in Kolkata put the police and the State security apparatus on high alert. The e-mail was from the ID yes_boss@yahoo.co.in from a group that calls itself “Indian Mujahideen.”

An unprecedented four layers of security check were enforced at the stadium during the India-Pakistan Test match from November 30 and at the hotel where the players stayed. For the first time, hidden cameras and decoy buses were used while ferrying the players to the stadium and back.

Maliwal said: “The increasing terrorist strikes in the hinterland by foreign-controlled modules, particularly strikes where the intent matches the opportunity, have already attracted the attention of national security managers and efforts are on to counter them. While the foreign-controlled modules will continue to promote their intent, denying them the opportunity is the responsibility of the security managers.” •

See, Atticus had'ta take this case where he was defendin' a black man named Tom accused of rapin' a white girl. I asked him before the case why he was doin' it, since none of the white folks in town --neither the Fine Folks nor the trash-- wanted him to take it. This here's what Atticus said back t' me:

"For a number of reasons. The main one is, if I didn't I couldn't hold up my head in town, I couldn't represent this county in the legislature, I couldn't even tell you or Jem not to do something again."

He said a person's got to follow his or her conscience, not the crowd, an' he didn't think Tom done what he's accused of -- an' even if he did, he's still entitled to a fair trial.

I hear there's the same sorta debate goin' on nowadays, 'bout
them terr -- I mean prisoners-- down at Guantanamo Bay. It only makes sense: any ol' farmer in 2002 Afghanistan coulda turned in one of his chicken-thievin' enemies an' accused him of bein' a terrorist. I hear they even was givin' out cash rewards for turnin' people in. Don't make it right, tho'.

Atticus even had a little armed scuffle down the jail the night 'fore the trial started. Some men was lookin' to lynch Tom without no trial at all, an' we stopped 'em.

I don't read my Bible as much as I ought, but they's one part I remember 'cause it was both poetical an' true at the same time, especially true o' them bad men:

"God is light. There is no darkness in Him at all. If we say that we are in union with God while we are living in darkness, we are lying because we are not living the truth." (1 John 1:5b-6)

Them men was living in darkness two ways: first, they waited till dark to attempt their dirty deed in secret, as evil men an' politicians often do. An' secondly, they was just plain ignorant, their minds darkened by racism. We don't do that way down here no more... or at least we're tryin'.

It's driving me insane /
It will not let me live /
Always so negative /
It's become my enemy " ( Jem -Save me ) [ btw i love jem <3 ]
 I ... miss the seaside. I cannot wait (!!!) to get it over with my stupid exams and just get the hell out of this city. I've had enought, i feel traped and that's not going to help me find my zen moment any time soon Hopefully, two months from now, my life will be back on track again. At least that's how this is supposed to work. I don't even remember how it was like when i felt... well, maybe not on  the right track, but right next to it : ) 

I just feel like i have so much to look foreword to, like there's so much more to life than what it looks like from where i'm standing, and i'll do anything to get it. As soon as i find out how, 'cause right now, i don't really see what i could change in my life that would actually make an impact on the way i see the world. Anyway, as a short-term plan, i just want to get the fuck away from my life - this one - for a few weeks. I really do belive (even though i am a pessimist) that sometimes, some aspects of one's life can be beautiful, and i would really really like to just try to be happy, al least a few seconds once in a while. I know i could, i'm just scared (i guess) that... i don't know... i'll somehow loose that at one point and it would suck less if i had nothing to loose at all. (yeah, it sounds dumb to me too). I would really like to be as happy as i could be with my boyfriend, for example. I could let myself feel more, enjoy it more, etc etc. But i don't. I know, even i'm bored with this subject, but i can't help myself to think about all that crap i souldn't think about. What if he doesn't really love me? What if he's playing with me? What if i'm not good enough? What if he'll hurt me? What if he'll change me? What if i'll start doing compromises i wouldn't normally do?  What happens when it stops? What happens when he leaves? What happens when we grow up? BLA BLA BLA... I should really learn to take chances. To play this game better. 'Cause it is a game, after all, everything is. I could get better at it, i'm just afraid it would make me a colder person in the future, and (as i've already done it) i'll drive everyone that i care about away from me. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger colder. I'll just start building walls even when i don't need to.

I would also like to get along better with my friends. With some of them. I just feel... dissapointed in everyone all the time, with no real reason, at least not one that would explain why i have the need to point out everything they do wrong. Plus, i think i can't really talk about me anymore, they seem to get me wrong everytime. There was a time when talking to someone would make me feel a whole lot better, now i feel nothing, because it's like i don't get any feedback. Not all the time. But frequently enough to get me thinking. Guess i should stop thinking...

The book reads like a starter's pistol for the soul-searching of the Sixties, after the restorative nap that was the Eisenhower era. Whatever national "innocence" we had enjoyed -- about Cold War politics, race, sexuality, even basic ethics -- all was whittled away throughout the Sixties, Just as Scout and Jem came of age in the novel, so too did our United States come of age in the Kennedy years (including Bobby's rise and fall). A "trial" --whether one is speaking literally or figuratively-- will do that to a person.

I'm reading the book for the first time this week. Shocking, I know, that I hadn't read it yet. I just never got around to it, and never was steered toward it in any formal classes. Plus, I must admit it's one case where I succumbed to using the modern non-reader's excuse: I saw the movie.

It's a shame, really, that no one pressed me to read it before now. (Except Chicago mayor Richard Daley, in the inaugural year of the One City/One Book campaign). I should have taught it to my American Lit high schoolers, way back when, ... instead of spending so long on the dry, overwrought prose of ~The Scarlet Letter~.

I'm only 75 pages into it, but that's far enough to notice a few traits that make it an important work. For one thing, it's unexpectedly funny. The humor is subtle, in a smart, Southern, feminine-but-flinty way I had previously only seen in the work of Flannery O'Connor (an all-time fave). There's a steady sense of the wise woman behind the text, winking, introducing me to some of her beloved local townies. "Look what beautiful fools we all are," she's saying. "And not just us... you too, dear."

Tomorrow: religious & political winks & nudges, from Ms. Lee

The rel

• Girl's Night Out
• Rockin' Down Through Time
• The Other Side of Me
• Aztec Enchantment
• Pumpin Up the Party
• Who is He Kissing?
• Part of Your World
• Everybody Wears a Mask
• Make Some Noise
• Glitter n' Gold
• True Friend

The answers are kinda unimportant.  I'm just suggesting that maybe we should go back to the time when we had animated pop singers for young girls...

...rather than real life ones that take myspace pictures of themselves in bikinis and act creepy with their fathers.

Jem would have never done this.  Jerrica neither.

The flight back yesterday was the same as the flight to:  yours truly surrounded by upset young'uns.  It was like being at the Travs game on those Screaming Kids days they have for school groups.  Truly a time to turn up the mp3 player and drown out someone else's sorrows.   A time, in fact, to wallow in musical minutiae.

A report from the CheckOneTwo mp3 player:  these are the tracks that have a number in the title.  Put them together, and it's a pretty kick-arse playlist:

Garbage:  #1 Crush.  From the Romeo & Juliet soundtrack (ahh, I know, get off me, this song is terrific).  Shirley Manson makes me believe she'd sink ships for me. 

Sonic Youth:  100%, from Dirty.  You know it's SY right from the opening feedback, and it gets better from there. 

Eileen Rose:  Two in One.   From the album Long Shot Novena.  Got to see Eileen Rose open for Frank Black a few years back, and I was immediately sucked in.  Boston chicka, pipes alternating between a soft croon and a rabid bluesy howl.   One of the greatest lines ever:  "I'm gonna take my sugar with lemon on the side....Tell the Angel move on over, the Devil's gonna ride....."

BR-549:  Six Days on the Road.   Great old trucker song remake.  "I'm poppin' little white pills and my eyyyyyes are open wide...."

Paul Hardcastle:  19.   You know the one.  "N-n-n-nineteen.  Nineteen."  One of the first songs I ever heard that used a sampler, and schooled me on important facts about the Vietnam War.  History class, and I could dance to it.

Jem:  24.  This is a song that I really love, although it may have been used as part of the promo for the Kiefer Sutherland series.  BabySham and I saw Jem at Bonnaroo a while back.  Terrible live set, but this Welsh lass has some great pipes in the studio. 

Lucinda Williams:  2-Kool 2-be 4-Gotten.  From Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, the album I always listen to while wandering around on Earth Day.  I think it's because it was the soundtrack from when I opened the Sierra Club office here several years ago.  When Lucinda croons, "Junebuuuuuuug versus hurricane, junebuuuuug versus hurricane," all is right with the world.

Smoke up Johnny:  12th Street.  We all know girls like the subject of this song, right?  The little rich girl who slummed around with us for a while, but then eventually ran back to her rich friends?  Sorry babe, but you ain't gotta heart. 

Blind Melon:  3 is a Magic Number.  Shannon Hoon & Co. remake the old Schoolhouse Rock tune.  Give it a listen.  I'm pretty sure it was done in one take.

PJ Harvey:  50 Foot Queenie.   God bless America, this is a great song.  Polly Jean jumps in right over the opening bassline and wails away.  I love how she grows bigger and bigger over the course of the song.  HeyI'mTheKingOfTheWorld!  YouOughttaHearMySong!  ComeOnAndMeasureMe!  I'm FiftyInchesLong!!

Deftones:  7 Words.  Somebody's got some serious scream abilities.  This is not the song you want to play while Grandma's in the car, unless you're in the will. 

Bow Wow Wow:  C30, C60, C90, Go!  C'mon, lie and tell me you didn't have a crush on the Bow Wow Wow chick when we were kids.  She had candy, you wanted it, and here it is.  

Silver Swirly:  Six String Sail.  From the Shannon Yarbrough tribute album, Listen to What I'm Made Of.  I didn't know Shannon, but this is one of my faves from the album.

The Donnas:  Zero.   Is there anyone better than the Donnas at just making funny three-chords-and-out songs about relationships?  Not for my money.   Dudes get their chops busted in every track, including this one.

The Cure:  Wrong Number.  OK, so it doesn't actually have a number in the title, but close enough.  This song is The Cure in techno mode, with the best-laid plans this side of America.  BabySham loves hearing Robert Smith talking on the phone near the end, all British-y, when he says, "Sorry...wrong numbah..."

QUESTION:  Your favorite song with a number in the title (and why)?

In a highly networked world, where negatively publicity regarding human rights abuses, particularly involving children, can quickly harm an organization's standing, being accused of harboring child soldiers is not a good thing. 

In particular, two organizations have gone out of their way to defend themselves against allegations of their using child soldiers.  As I mentioned in a posting last week, JEM, a rebel group fighting the Sudanese government in Darfur, recently threatened to sue a British human rights organization for accusing them of using kidnapped child soldiers.  And then just last week, after a report came out by the United Nations estimating that over 1,000 under-age fighters were still in rebel ranks of the Tamil Tigers, the group responded by saying they had released 27 more child soldiers.  They are working to demobilize the remaining 30 child soldiers still within their ranks.  They pointedly denied having anywhere close to the numbers reported by the UN.

From this article by APF:

According to Unicef, there are 1,410 outstanding cases of child recruitment by the rebels at the end of April 2008.  "Of these, 146 are under the age of 18, and 1,264 were recruited while under 18 but have now passed that age," UNICEF said.  Over the past two decades, the LTTE has promised to release children from their rank and file, but they have been accused of failing to take concrete action.

The news that LTTE has released children is wonderful, and this trend needs to continue around the world until every last child soldier is free.

This is the track of hers - "Come On Closer" - that most stands out for me personally; I'm a big fan of minor chord progressions. (This version of the song - no video yet - is a bit more in line with the trip hop label.)

When we arrived at our friend's house in Yakima, we were introduced to a little kitten who might be the most adorable kitteh in the world. She'd been found after her mother had been killed. By the time she was found, all of her bothers and sisters had died because mom wasn't there to help them go to the bathroom or feed them. This one kitten remained, and our friends saved her and got her healthy.

Unfortunately their other cat became very moody about this so when they saw me and the kitteh get so attached to each other, the offer was made, and I drove cross-country with a seven week old kitten. I named her Stormer and she's family now.

Yes, after Stormer of the Misfits. From the cartoon Jem. I never said I wasn't a little off.

So it looks like Elvis is really dead. What can we learn from this? I don't know. But life is short. So don't waste a minute: hug your friends, make nice with your enemies, kiss your bunnies, and if you want to be a pop star or a spy, go do it! If you want a delicious cupcake, put on your blue faux-suede shoes and get baking!

As a fan of the King and admirer (like Elvis) of peanut butter and banana sandwiches, I expected these cupcakes to be good. I didn't quite expect them to rocket to the top of the charts, though. But rocket they did, like a comet, like a hip-shaking boy from Tupelo, like "That's All Right" in the summer of 1954. If you never try another recipe from VCTOTW, try this one. First of all, the cakes themselves: a variation on the Banana Split Cupcakes (81) of old: leave out the chocolate and jelly in the original recipe to make some "plain" banana cakes. You cannot go wrong in vegan backing with overripe banana as your leavening: it makes your cakes bake up light, moist, and fluffy with hardly any effort on your part. Seriously. Terry & Isa recommend pressing the banana through a sieve or running through the blender for added smoothness before mixing, but that sounded hard. I just mashed a bit with a fork.

Next there's the Peanut Buttercream (151) which fills the cakes. The recipe is very similar to the buttercreams we already know and love, only this time you want to add some natural, salted, creamy peanut butter. I found an excellent brand in Yes! Organic market that's super creamy and doesn't suffer the oil-peanut separation that happens with a lot of natural peanut butters. (Yes!) I would love to tell you the brand name of this exceptional peanut butter, but memory has failed me. I can tell you, however, that there is a raccoon on the label. And if there's anything I've learned in all my years, it's that raccoons know their vegan comestibles. See Sticky Fingers Bakery for more details.

Isa & Terry give us the option of adding a few tablespoons of molasses to the peanut butter frosting, which I enthusiastically support: as I learned from the Peanut Butter of the Month Club, molasses and peanut butter together are a dynamic duo. To fill the cupcakes, Isa & Terry suggest using the same technique as for filling the Brooklyn v. Boston Creams (65): press clean finger into center of cupcake, work finger around on all sides to create space in center of cupcake, remove finger, use pastry bag to squeeze frosting into center. But since it worked out so well last time, instead I used the cupcake excavation technique, as applied to the Tiramisu cakes (119): use a sharp spoon to cut a cone out of the center of each cupcake, fill center with frosting, then replace conical cut-out. The cut-out doesn't go back in perfectly (duh-the space is full of delicious peanut butter frosting!) but that's okay: it makes for an interesting tiered effect. I drizzled some of the Quick Melty Ganache (143) over top too, since nothing compliments banana and peanut butter better than a bit of chocolate. You know you agree.

Needless to say, these cupcakes didn't last long, but I did manage to share them with some of my regular taste-testers, who concur: the Elvis cupcake is King. It was one bright spot in Charlotte's otherwise crappy weekend.

Carpe diem. Or at least carpe libum.

Mr. Darcy: So what do you recommend to encourage affection?
Elizabeth Bennet: Dancing. Even if one's partner is barely tolerable.

- Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

Right before the second half of a morose film about two young aspiring writers, a dance breaks out. So far, the film unfolds like a book either one of them could have written (since we never actually see their creative process or actual contents). Better yet, it develops like an cinematic adaptation of their novels, complete with flashbacks, flashforwards, what-ifs, and a dry weary narrator. Best buds since grade school, Erik and Phillip, who are the literary equivalents to real life Swedish musical duo, Tough Alliance, struggle to keep their existential careers intact. Philip is depicted as an inherently gifted wordsmith who undergoes a nervous breakdown because he "loves" his girlfriend, Kari, too much. Again props to the casting director for finding a prettier Bjork. Erik's relationship to writing is bound to his idolizing friendship with Philip; their desires are aligned as if they're one person. Thankfully, no bizarre love triangle is formed between the three main characters, or at least, by any heterosexual dictum.

Reprise (Joachim Trier, 2006) exchanges scenes and dialogs typical of my generation, a swarm of twenty-somethings with a full-time job and a part-time dream to realize whatever shred of creative potential that might grow into an insular enterprise...this blog for instance.

Le Tigre - Deceptacon

[audio http://www.whokilledthemixtape.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/01-deceptacon.mp3]

One of the many elements that have been obligatory in films dealing with dime-store alienation and aimless directionality afflicting young folks is the momentary dance that only exacerbates those symptoms of modernity for the viewer--a confirmation of shit hitting the fan but in slow motion. In Reprise, Le Tigre's Deceptacon only comes on through the speakers because one of the guys decided to amp up the party scene and overthrow the tranquilizing muzak. It works on both fronts, the participants there, and for me here! Like the bumper car sequence in Bresson's Mouchette, the dance suspends the pervasive mood enveloping the rest of the film, it gives both the character and the viewer breathing space before we take the plunge back into the film as a whole. Unlike the musical genre which includes its now trendy white girl-can-do-hip-hop-too inspirational manifestos, the best dance sequences are those extractable from the larger body of work. You expect them, not anticipate them. They stick out like sore thumbs and propels our bodies to mingle with those onscreen rather than enjoying it voyeuristically. Reprise with all its crazy pillow fights and heads and toes going up and down, delivers a kinetic analogy to the film's central metaphor, a dark undeveloped photograph Erik took of him and Philip meeting their great hero, a reclusive author. Only one minor forgotten detail: he left his lens cap on. Yet, like the transitory dance, the blackened photo signifies the very tools of how we visualize---with our memories and imagination---than anything emulsified on film or in cinema. A writer's block, a reader's reign.

P.S. Hands down, better than the official video! Jem fans, be proud:

A Britta Phillips retrospective (in reverse chronological order):

Dean and Britta - Words You Used to Say

Singing "Mr. Big Stuff" in Satisfaction:

Jem Theme Song

Khartoum is built where the Blue Nile and White Nile join together on their northward journey towards the Mediterranean sea. Miriam and I went swimming - it has a strong current but is very refreshing in the 45 degree heat! Some unique features of the city: it sprawls for miles in every direction, each neighbourhood having its own name and character traffic is busy, no streetlights or signs, the roads are unmarked, and many crazy drivers! the 'whirling dervishes', who dance at sunset on Fridays as part of an Islamic tradition mosques abundant, their calls to prayer sounding as early as five in the morning Below, Miriam and her housemate Cressida sit in their favored after-work spot, enjoying smuggled gin-and-tonics!

I was in Khartoum during a tense time. On my second day in the city, rebels from Darfur's Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) attacked a western neighbourhood. It was the nearest to Khartoum the rebels had ever come. Although crushed by government force, their message was clear - that as long as Darfur remained in turmoil, Khartoum would not be allowed peace either.

On the actual day of the attack, Miriam and I were driving back into the city from the eastern side. Far from the fighting, we still had some difficulty getting home as the roads and bridges were blocked by government troops. It was a little frightening at the time, since we didn't yet know what the stir was about, and ended up a little lost for directions with a dead cell phone! Our saviour: a UN car going the same way, who we followed back to recognizable territory.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the nerve to take pictures of the soldiers or artillery on the roads.

& Barbie filmen var given när jag låg hemma & var sjuk. Det var tider det ett paket GB & lite Barbie.

for your enjoyment, i've compiled the best of the oc (excluding mix 3 because it's a christmas cd). and for all you fans out there, i've also taken the liberty of including which episode the song is in, along with some of its highlights. join me on this trip down memory lane..

1. how good it can be- the 88 (from mix 1)

• "the heights" (s1, e9): it's ryan's first day at harborl. marissa just od'd in TJ because she saw Luke cheat on her. (still not feeling sorry for her). the anna/seth/summer love triangle intensifies, and sandy and caleb begin a legal battle over the balboa heights. the episode ends with marissa and ryan's first kiss on the ferris wheel, and thus begins a 3 year on and off relationship of agony. (clearly, i'm not a marissa fan)

2. we used to be friends- the dandy warhols (1)

• "the secret" (s1, e12): this is the pivotal point where luke the jerk becomes pathetic but hilarious luke. it all boils down to his dad being outed in this episode. this ushers in the oliver era...arguably the best couple of episodes in the entire series.

3. something pretty- patrick park (2)

• "the telenovela" (s1, e20): ryan dumps marissa after the oliver saga (finally), but of course this has nothing to do with the fact that theresa, his ex from chino, is back in the picture. did i mention she's engaged? luke is sleeping with julie cooper, and seth finally mans up and declares his love for summer very publicly at school.

4. if you leave- nada surf (2)

• "the goodbye girl" (s1, e21): anna moves back to pittsburgh and theresa to chino (but not before they do the dirty...which poses a problem later). caleb and julie get back together (gross). the fact that the woman can sleep with a 17 year old then a senior citizen still blows my mind.

5. maybe i'm amazed- jem (2)

• "the ties that bind" (s1, e27): oops, theresa's pregnant. which means ryan's gotta go back to chino, causing marissa to bawl her eyes out at her mom and caleb's wedding (shh, he's broke!). seth freaks out about ryan leaving and decides to take that sailing trip to tahiti, without telling summer.

6. trouble sleeping- the perishers (2)

• "the way we were" (s2, e2): ryan and seth are back in newport after summers in chino and portland, respectively. summer has moved on (hellooooo zach), and oh yeah, caleb gets arrested, making him criminal husband #2 for julie cooper-nichol.

7. on the table- ac newman (4)

• "the new kids on the block" (s2, e3): lindsey gardner is here, people! later, we find out that she's the secret love child of caleb, making her the kind-of aunt of ryan. not that this stops him from dating her. seth starts working at the bait shop, which means that alex makes her entrance into one of the trashier phases of the show.

8. champagne supernova- matt pond PA (4)

• "the rainy day women" (s2, e14): one of my favorite episodes ever. marissa moves in with alex (yep, her girlfriend now), and kirsten thinks sandy is cheating on her with his ex-fiancee. summer ditches zach at the airport (on the way to italy to be a bridesmaid in his sister's wedding...poor guy) to be with seth, leading to that upside down spiderman kiss in the rain.

9. requiem for o.m.m.- of montreal (5)

• "the rager" (s2, e19): kirsten maybe has a crush on carter, the editor? (still not sure) of newport living. zach and seth try to launch atomic county, their comic book series, while julie gets caught up in a sex tape scandal. marissa throws ryan's brother, trey, a 21st birthday party, at which a girl od's and falls into the pool.

10. california (phantom planet cover)- mates of state (6)

• "the chrismukk-huh?" (s4. e7): ryan and taylor fall off a ladder, causing them to enter into a delusional o.c. world where julie is married to sandy, the mayor of newport, and jimmy cooper and kirsten are married. summer is engaged to winchester (che), and seth is a loner. most importantly, taylor and ryan don't exist in this parallel universe. the two have to get the real couples back together before they can return to the real world. this sounds really weird, but this episode is actually worth watching.

as you can see, season 3 is not represented very well. that's because season 3 is AWFUL. just go straight from 2 to 4 if you're watching. you'll like the series a lot more that way.

[Urbandub - The Fight Is Over] I've heard of this band for years and I've always ignored them because I thought they were too loud. But that impression all changed when I heard them cover a song by... of all the artists to cover... Sade! The song was "No Ordinary Love". Amazing version they did of the Sade classic. After that, I began to see them in a different light. I started to notice that their songs had melodies after all. And over the past few years, they've sort of developed a knack for embedding accessible melodies within their hard rockin' sound. I find it funny that the people commenting on their videos on youtube are fighting over which genre they belong to. In my own opinion, their sound is nu metal with slight hints of emo in their lyrics. They might even be considered progressive rock because of the way they're experimenting with their sound lately. But at the end of the day, all that matters is that they play good music and I'm proud of this band for reppin' my hometown bigtime. This tune I've put up is currently stuck in my head... its their new single from their current album Under Southern Lights. I love the song not just because its good but also cuz I've been in the same situation before hehe. Relate to da max! Now, onto the rest of the mix...

[Jem - It's Amazing] A new song from Jem off the soundtrack of Sex and The City: The Movie. Apparently, the movie's good... but I haven't seen it yet. Yes, I'm not ashamed to admit I wanna see it. So slap me! The song is fantastic... haunting piano intro right before the trippy percussion and melody of the verses come in... "Come with me, I want to show you something..." then she proceeds to tell you how you've lost the ability to appreciate the simplicity and joy of what's around you and point out that "it's amazing". So what's amazing according to the song? Life. It's good to feel alive, she sings... Relax it's easy... so she says. The way it all plays out, the quality of the song is like that of a tune from a music box... haunting... but with pop undertones amidst its alt-triphop-ish vibe. Very cool song from Jem! Now we're ready to embrace that new album of hers... bring it on.

[Flobots - Handlebars] This song is from last year but its slowly getting a lot of attention lately. It starts off kind of funny and sort of stupid because of the lyrics then slowly builds up to this amazing tune about the possibilities of what you can do as a person in this current world of ours... the words are simply put but they come off as genius because in my opinion, the style works! pure blazin' awesomeness! I can't stop singin' it unconsciously wherever I go. It must've hypnotized me or something. (What is up with me and the word [have] / ['ve]... i don't know how to control it... i always use it. I need help!)

[Kerli - Walking On Air] Kerli Kõiv, or just simply Kerli... this girl is someone to watch out for! People are hailing her as the new Bjork. She's from Estonia... I don't know where that is... Europe? (sorry hehe) Kerli is currently signed with Island Def Jam and is set to release her debut album Love Is Dead on July 8, 2008. That album title is also the title of her first single which was released around late last year. The music video to that song was how I made my first impression of this girl... I was creeped out! Watch it [here] to know what I'm talking about. This song I've put up is her second single, a Lester Mendez-produced ditty that's also quite "creepy" in the verses yet melodic in the chorus. Check out its [video] too... still a tad creepy somewhere after the middle and near the end... but overall a fascinating thing to watch. I really really like this song. I'm sure you will, too. Word of the day... creepy.

[Regina Spektor - The Call] A great way to end this mix... the voice of Regina Spektor serving us up a soothing and thought-provoking song from the new Narnia movie. Aaaah I want a new album from her... she is just awesome. The song is very beautiful... its meaning is up for interpretation... however you want to take it. I've got my own take on it. My favorite parts: "Just because everything's changing, doesn't mean it's never been this way before. It's just a feeling and no one knows yet. But just because they can't feel it too, doesn't mean that you have to forget."

Save the music! Support the artists by buying their music from legit sites and music shops. and oh... Go Green!