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Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Underground (British Subculture )

Underground (British subculture)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Underground was a countercultural movement in the United Kingdom linked to the underground culture in the United States and associated with the hippie phenomenon. Its primary focus was around Ladbroke Grove and Notting Hill in London. It generated its own magazines and newspapers, bands, clubs and alternative lifestyle, associated with cannabis and LSD use and a strong socio-political revolutionary agenda to create an alternative society.

1 Beatnik influence
2 History
3 Commentators
4 Lifestyle
5 Aesthetics
6 The overground

Beatnik influence

Many in the blossoming underground movement were influenced by 1950s Beatnik Beat generation writers such as William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, who paved the way for the hippies of the 1960s. During the 1960s, the Beatnik writers engaged in symbiotic evolution with freethinking academics including experimental psychologist Timothy Leary.
An example of the cross-over of beatnik poetry and music can be seen when Burroughs appeared at the Phun City festival, organised in 24-26 July 1970 by Mick Farren with underground community bands including the Pretty Things, the Pink Fairies, The Edgar Broughton Band and, from America, The MC5.

History

The UK's underground movement was focused on the Ladbroke Grove/Notting Hill area of London, which Mick Farren said "was an enclave of freaks, immigrants and bohemians long before the hippies got there" . It had been depicted in Colin MacInnes' novel Absolute Beginners which depicted street culture at the time of the Notting Hill Riots in the 1950s.
The underground paper International Times (IT) began to appear in 1966 and Steve Abrams founder of Soma summarised the underground as a "literary and artistic avant-garde with a large contingent from Oxford and Cambridge. John Hopkins (Hoppy) a member of the editorial board of International Times for example, was trained as a physicist at Cambridge"
Police harassment of members of the underground (often referred to as "freaks", initially by others as an insult, and later by themselves as an act of defiance) became commonplace, particularly against the underground press. According to Farren, "Police harassment, if anything, made the underground press stronger. It focused attention, stiffened resolve, and tended to confirm that what we were doing was considered dangerous to the establishment."

Oz number 33, back cover advertising "A Gala Benefit For The OZ Obscenity Trial"

Key Underground (community) bands of the time who often performed at benefit gigs for various worthy causes included Pink Floyd (when they still had Syd Barrett), Soft Machine, Hawkwind, The Deviants (featuring Mick Farren), and Pink Fairies; other key people included, in the late '60s, Marc Bolan, who would leave "the Grove" to find fame with T Rex and his partner Steve Peregrin Took, who remained in Ladbroke Grove and continued to perform benefit gigs in the anti-commercial ethos of the UK underground.
Within Portobello Road stood the Mountain Grill greasy spoon (working man's) café which in the late 1960s and early 1970s was frequented by many UK Underground artists such as Hawkwind featuring, at the time, Lemmy. It was of sufficient import to the members of the UK Underground that in 1974 Hawkwind released an album titled Hall Of The Mountain Grill and Steve Peregrin Took wrote Ballad of the Mountain Grill.

“

My own feeling is that, not just sex, but anger and violence, are part and parcel of rock n' roll. The rock concert can work as an alternative for violence, an outlet for violence. But at that time there were a lot of things that made us really angry. We were outraged! In the U.S. the youth were sent to Vietnam and there was nothing we could do to change the way the government did it. Smoking marijuana and doing things to get thrown in jail were our own way of expressing our anger, and we wanted change - I believed that picking up a guitar, not a gun, would bring about change". It's like Germaine Greer said about the Underground - it's not just some sort of scruffy club you can join, you're in or you're out... it's like being a criminal.

”

Lifestyle

The underground movement was also symbolised by the use of drugs. The types of drugs used were varied and in many cases the names and effects were unknown as The Deviants/Pink Fairies member Russell Hunter, working at International Times (part of the Underground press at the time), recalled. "People used to send in all kinds of strange drugs and things, pills and powders, stuff to smoke and that. They'd always give them to me to try to find out what they were! (Laughs)".
Part of the sense of humour of the underground, no doubt partly induced by the effects of both drugs and radical thinking was an enjoyment at "freakin' out the norms". Mick Farren recalls actions sure to elicit the required response. "The band's baroque House of Usher apartment on London's Shaftesbury Avenue had witnessed pre-Raphaelite hippy scenes, like Sandy the bass player (of The Deviants and Pink Fairies), Tony the now and again keyboard player, and a young David Bowie, fresh from Beckenham Arts Lab, sunbathing on the roof, taking photos of each other and posing coyly as sodomites".

Aesthetics

The image of the underground as manifested in magazines such as OZ and newspapers like International Times was dominated by key talented graphic artists, particularly Martin Sharp and the Nigel Waymouth – Michael English team, Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, who fused Alfons Mucha's Art Nouveau arabesques with the higher colour key of psychedelia.

The overground

There was a smaller, less widely spread manifestation from the UK Underground termed the "Overground", which referred to an explicitly spiritual, cosmic, quasi-religious intent, though this was an element that had always been present. At least two magazines — Gandalf's Garden (6 issues, 1968–72) and Vishtaroon — adopted this "overground" style. Gandalf's Garden was also a shop/restaurant/meeting place at World's End, Chelsea. The magazines were printed on pastel paper using multi-coloured inks and contained articles about meditation, vegetarianism, mandalas, ethics, poetry, pacifism and other subjects at a distance from the more wild and militant aspects of the underground. The first issue of Gandalf's Garden urged that we should "seek to stimulate our own inner gardens if we are to save our Earth and ourselves from engulfment." It was edited by Muz Murray who is now called Ramana Baba and teaches yoga.
These attitudes were embodied musically in The Incredible String Band, who in 2003 were described as "holy" by Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, in a foreword for the book Be Glad: An Incredible String Band Compendium (Helter Skelter Books). He had previously chosen the band's track The Hedgehog's Song as his only piece of popular music on the radio programme Desert Island Discs). The late critic Ian MacDonald's had stated "much that appeared to be profane in Sixties youth culture was quite the opposite".

Underground Press

Underground press

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The phrase underground press is most often used to refer to the independently published and distributed underground papers associated with the counterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and other western nations. It also refers to illegal publications under oppressive governments, for example, the samizdat and bibuła in the Soviet Union and Poland respectively.

1 Origins
2 Underground press in Australia
- 2.1 List of underground press in Australia
3 The underground press in the UK
- 3.1 List of underground press in the United Kingdom
4 The underground press in the United States and Canada
- 4.1 List of underground press in the United States
- 4.2 List of US military GI underground press
- 4.3 List of FBI COINTELPRO "underground" news operations
- 4.4 List of underground press in Canada
5 See also
6 Further reading

Origins

This movement borrowed the name from previous "underground presses" such as the Dutch underground press during the Nazi occupations of the 1940s. The French resistance published a large and active underground press that printed over 2 million newspapers a month; the leading titles were Combat, Libération, Défense de la France, and Le Franc-Tireur. Each paper was the organ of a separate resistance network, and funds were provided from Allied headquarters in London and distributed to the different papers by resistance leader Jean Moulin. Allied prisoners of war (POWs) published an underground newspaper called Pow wow. In Eastern Europe, also since approximately the 1940, underground publications were known by the name samizdat. Those predecessors were truly "underground," meaning they were illegal, thus published and distributed covertly. While the countercultural "underground" papers frequently battled with governmental authorities, for the most part they were distributed openly through a network of street vendors, newsstands and head shops, and thus reached a wide audience.
The underground press in the 1960s and '70s existed in most countries with high GDP per capita and freedom of the press; similar publications existed in some developing countries and as part of the samizdat movement in the communist states, notably Czechoslovakia. Published as weeklies, monthlies, or "occasionals", and usually associated with left-wing politics, they evolved on the one hand into today's alternative weeklies and on the other into zines.

Underground press in Australia

The most prominent underground publication in Australia was a satirical magazine called Oz (1963 to 1969), which owed an obvious debt to the UK magazine Private Eye. The original Australian edition appeared in 1963 and it continued sporadically until 1969. The Australian editions published after 1966 were edited by Richard Walsh, following the departure for the UK of his original co-editors Richard Neville and Martin Sharp, who founded the British edition ("London Oz") in 1967.

List of underground press in Australia

The Digger (1972-75)
The Living Daylights (early 1970s)
New Dawn (magazine)
Nexus (magazine)

The underground press in the UK

it No. 8

In London, Barry Miles, John Hopkins and others produced International Times which, following legal threats from The Times newspaper was renamed IT.
Richard Neville arrived in London from Australia where he had edited Oz (1963 to 1969). He launched a British version (1967 to 1973), which was A4 (as opposed to IT's broadsheet format). Very quickly, the relaunched Oz shed its more austere satire magazine image and became a mouthpiece of the Underground. It was the most colourful and visually adventurous of the alternative press (sometimes to the point of near-illegibility), with designers like Martin Sharp. Other publications followed, such as Friends (later Frendz), based in the Ladbroke Grove area of London, Ink, which was more overtly political, and Gandalf's Garden which espoused the mystic path.
Neville published an account of the counterculture called Playpower, in which he described most of the world's underground publications. He also listed many of the regular key topics from those publications including Vietnam, Black Power, Politics, Police Brutality, Hippies & Lifestyle Revolution, Drugs, Popular Music, New Society, Cinema, Theatre, Graphics, Cartoons etc.
The underground press offered a platform to the socially impotent and mirrored the changing way of life in the UK underground.
Police harassment of the British underground in general became commonplace, to the point that in 1967 the police seemed to focus in particular on the apparent source of agitation: the underground press. The police campaign may have had an effect contrary, however, to that which was presumably intended. If anything, according to one or two who were there at the time, it actually made the underground press stronger. "It focused attention, stiffened resolve, and tended to confirm that what we were doing was considered dangerous to the establishment", remembered Mick Farren. From April 1967, and for some while later, the police raided the offices of International Times to try, it was alleged, to force the paper out of business. In order to raise money for IT a benefit event was put together, "The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream" Alexandra Palace on 29 April, 1967.
On one occasion - in the wake of yet another raid on IT - London's alternative press, somewhat astonishingly, succeeded in pulling off what was billed as a 'reprisal attack' on the police. The paper Black Dwarf published a detailed floor-by-floor 'Guide to Scotland Yard,' complete with diagrams, descriptions of locks on particular doors, and snippets of overheard conversation. The anonymous author, or 'blue dwarf,' as he styled himself,' claimed to have perused archive files, and even to have sampled one or two brands of scotch in the Commissioner's office. The London Evening Standard headlined the incident as "Raid on the Yard". A day or two later The Daily Telegraph announced that the prank had resulted in all security passes to the police headquarters having to be withdrawn and then re-issued.
By the end of the decade, community artists and bands such as Pink Floyd, (before they "went commercial"), the The Deviants, Pink Fairies, Hawkwind, Michael Moorcock and Steve Peregrin Took would arise in a symbiotic co-operation with the underground press. The underground press publicised these bands and this made it possible for them to tour and get record deals. The band members travelled around spreading the ethos and the demand for the newspapers and magazines grew and flourished for a while.
The flaunting of sexuality within the underground press provoked prosecution. IT was taken to court for publishing small ads for homosexuals; despite the 1967 legalisation of homosexuality between consenting adults in private importuning remained subject to prosecution. The Oz "School Kids" issue, brought charges against the three Oz editors who were convicted and given jail sentences. This was the first time the Obscene Publications Act 1959 was combined with a moral conspiracy charge. The convictions were, however, overturned on appeal.

List of underground press in the United Kingdom

Peace News
International Times (also IT)
Oz
Gandalf's Garden
Heatwave
Black Dwarf
Idiot International
Friends (later Frendz)
Gay News
Spare Rib
The Fanatic
Ink
Running Man
Brighton Voice
The Caterpillar - A Visionary Ghetto Tabloid

The underground press in the United States and Canada

In the United States, the term underground did not mean illegal as it would in other countries. The First Amendment and various court decisions (e.g. Near v. Minnesota) give very broad rights to anyone to publish a newspaper or other publication, and severely restrict the government in any effort to close down or censor a private publication. In fact, when censorship attempts are made by government agencies, they are either done in clandestine fashion (to keep it from being known the action is being taken by a government agency) or are usually ordered stopped by the courts when judicial action is taken in response to them. A publication must, in general, be committing a crime (for example, reporters burglarizing someone's office to obtain information about a news item); violating the law in publishing a particular article or issue (printing obscene material, copyright infringement, libel, breaking a non-disclosure agreement); directly threatening national security; or causing or potentially causing an imminent emergency (the "clear and present danger" standard) to be ordered stopped or otherwise suppressed, and then usually only the particular offending article or articles in question will be banned, while the newspaper itself is allowed to continue operating and can continue publishing other articles.
In the U.S. the term underground newspaper generally refers to an independent (and typically smaller) newspaper focusing on unpopular themes or counterculture issues. Typically, these tend to be politically to the left or far left. More narrowly, in the US the term "underground newspaper" most often refers to publications of the period 1965-1973, when a sort of boom or craze for local tabloid underground newspapers swept the country in the wake of court decisions making prosecution for obscenity far more difficult. These publications became the voice of the rising New Left and the hippie/psychedelic/rock and roll counterculture of the Sixties in America, and a focal point of opposition to the Vietnam War and the draft. In the period 1969-1970 a number of these papers grew more militant and began to openly discuss armed revolution against the state, printing manuals for bombing and urging readers to buy guns; but this trend of the previously pacifistic underground press toward violent confrontation soon fell silent after the brief, farcical rise and fall of the Weatherman Underground and the tragic shootings at Kent State. A number of papers passed out of existence at this time; among the survivors a new trend toward middle-class values and working within the system emerged, and the underground press began to evolve into the more moderate, life-style oriented "alternative press."

The East Village Other, April 13, 1967

The North American countercultural press of the 1960s drew inspiration from predecessors that had begun in the 1950s, such as the Village Voice and Paul Krassner's satirical paper The Realist. Arguably, the first underground newspaper of the 1960s was the Los Angeles Free Press, founded in 1964 and first published under that name in 1965. In mid-1966, the cooperative Underground Press Syndicate (UPS) was formed at the instigation of Walter Bowart, the publisher of another early paper, the East Village Other. The UPS allowed member papers to freely reprint content from any of the other member papers. One of the most notorious underground newspapers to join UPS and rallied activists, poets, and artists by giving them uncensored voice was the NOLA Express in New Orleans. Started by Robert Head and Darlene Fife as part of political protests and extending the "mimeo revolution" by protest and freedom-of-speech poets during the 1960s, NOLA Express was also a member of COSMEP (Committee of Small Magazine Editors and Publishers. These two affiliations with organizations that were often at cross purposes made NOLA Express one of the most radical and controversial publications of the counterculture movement. Part of the controversy about NOLA Express included graphic photographs and illustrations of which many even in today's society would be banned as pornographic.
Charles Bukowski's syndicated column, Notes of a Dirty Old Man, ran in NOLA Express, and Franciso McBride's illustration for the story "The Fuck Machine" was considered sexist, pornographic, and created an uproar. All of this controversy helped to increase the readership and bring attention to the political causes that editors Fife and Head supported.
Other prominent underground papers included the San Francisco Oracle, San Francisco Express Times, the Berkeley Barb and Berkeley Tribe; Open City, (Los Angeles), Fifth Estate (Detroit), Other Scenes (dispatched from various locations around the world by John Wilcock); The Helix (Seattle); Avatar (Boston); The Chicago Seed; The Great Speckled Bird (Atlanta); The Rag (Austin, Texas); Space City! (Houston); Rat (New York City); and in Canada, The Georgia Straight (Vancouver, BC). By 1969, virtually every sizable city or college town in North America boasted at least one underground newspaper. During the peak years of the underground press phenomenon there were generally about 100 papers currently publishing at any given time. There was also a widespread high school underground press movement circulating unauthorized student-published mimeographed sheets at hundreds of high schools around the US, with its own press services, FRED and HIPS (High School Underground Press Service). In 1968 a survey of 400 high schools in Southern California found that 52% reported student underground press activity in their school.
The GI underground press in America produced a few hundred titles during the Vietnam War, some produced by antiwar GI coffeehouses, and many of them small, crudely produced, low-circulation mimeographed "zines" written by a draftee editor opposed to the war and circulated locally off-base. Three or four GI underground papers had large-scale, national distribution of more than 20,000 copies including thousands of copies mailed to GIs overseas. These papers were produced with the support of civilian anti-war activists, and had to be disguised to be sent through the mail into Vietnam, where soldiers distributing or even possessing them might be subject to harassment, disciplinary action or arrest.
The boom in the underground press was made practical by the availability of cheap offset printing, which made it possible to print a few thousand copies of a small tabloid paper for a couple of hundred dollars, which a sympathetic printer might extend on credit. Paper was cheap, and many printing firms around the country had over-expanded during the 1950s and had excess capacity on their offset web presses, which could be negotiated for at bargain rates. Most papers operated on a shoestring budget, pasting up camera-ready copy on layout sheets on the editor's kitchen table, with labor performed by unpaid, non-union volunteers. Typesetting costs, which at the time were wiping out many established big city papers, were avoided by typing up copy on a rented or borrowed IBM Selectric typewriter to be pasted up by hand. As one observer commented with only slight hyperbole, students were financing the publication of these papers out of their lunch money.
The underground press phenomenon proved short-lived. By 1973, many underground papers had folded, at which point the Underground Press Syndicate acknowledged the passing of the undergrounds and renamed itself the Alternative Press Syndicate. That organization soon collapsed, to be supplanted by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies.
During the 1960s and 1970s, there were also a number of left political periodicals with some of the same concerns of the underground press. Some of these periodicals joined the Underground Press Syndicate to gain services such as microfilming, advertising, and the free exchange of articles and newspapers. Examples include The Black Panther (the paper of the Black Panther Party, Oakland, California), and the Guardian, New York City; both of which had national distribution. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conducted surveillance and disruption activities on the underground press in the United States, including a campaign to destroy the alternative agency Liberation News Service. As part of its COINTELPRO designed to discredit and infiltrate radical New Left groups, the FBI also launched phony underground newspapers such as the Armageddon News at Indiana University Bloomington, The Longhorn Tale at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Rational Observer at American University in Washington, D.C. The FBI also ran the Pacific International News Service in San Francisco, the Chicago Midwest News, and the New York Press Service. Many of these organizations consisted of little more than a post office box and a letterhead, designed to enable the FBI to receive exchange copies of underground press publications and send undercover observers to underground press gatherings.
The Georgia Straight outlived the underground movement, evolving into an alternative weekly still published today; Fifth Estate survives as an anarchist magazine. Most others died with the era. Given the nature of alternative journalism as a subculture, some staff members from underground newspapers became staff on the newer alternative weeklies, even though there was seldom institutional continuity with management or ownership. An example is the transition in Denver from the underground Chinook, to Straight Creek Journal, to Westword , an alternative weekly still in publication. Some underground and alternative reporters, cartoonists, and artists moved on to work in corporate media or in academia.
Ray Mungo, in his classic account of the American underground press, Famous Long Ago, gave a cynical account of the origins of the typical underground newspaper: "Lots of radicals will give you a very precise line about why their little newspaper was started and what needs it fulfills and most of that stuff is bull. You see, the point is they've got nothing to do and the prospect of holding a straight job is so dreary that they join 'the movement' and start hitting up people for money to live, on the premise that they're involved in critical social change blah blah blah."

List of underground press in the United States

Amazing Grace, Tallahassee, Florida
Ann Arbor Argus, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1969-1971
The Anvil, Durham, North Carolina, 1967-1983
Avatar, Boston, Massachusetts, 1967-1968
Berkeley Barb, Berkeley, California, 1965-1980
Berkeley Tribe, Berkeley, California, 1969-1972 (splintered from the Berkeley Barb)
The Big Us, Cleveland, Ohio, 1968-1970 (changed name to Burning River News)
The Black Panther, Oakland, California
Borrowed Times, Missoula, Montana
Boston Free Press, Boston, MA
Bugle-American, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1968-1972
Butterfield Express, Tucson, Arizona
Chicago Seed, Chicago, Illinois, 1967-1973
Chinook, Denver, Colorado, 1969-1972
Columbus Free Press, Columbus, Ohio, 1969-ongoing
Connections, Madison, Wisconsin
Counterpoint, Stevens Point, WI
Daily Flash, St. Louis, Missouri (changed name to Xanadu)
Daily Planet, Miami, Florida
Dallas Notes, Dallas, Texas, 1967-1970 (originally Notes from the Underground)
Distant Drummer, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1970-1979 (changed name to The Drummer)
Dock of the Bay, San Francisco, California
East Village Other, New York, New York, 1965-1972
Extra, Providence, Rhode Island
Fifth Estate, Detroit, Michigan, 1965-ongoing
Free Press of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky
Gothic Blimp Works, New York, New York
Fish Cheer, Pensacola, Florida
The Great Speckled Bird, Atlanta, Georgia, 1968-1976
The Guardian, New York, New York
Good Times, San Francisco, California, 1969-1972 (formerly San Francisco Express-Times)
Harry, Baltimore, Maryland, 1969-1970
The Helix, Seattle, Washington, 1967-1970
Hundred Flowers, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1970-1972
Illustrated Paper, Mendocino, California, 1966-1967
Independent Eye, Cincinnati, Ohio
Indianapolis Free Press, Indianapolis, Indiana
The Inquisition, Charlotte, North Carolina
Kaleidoscope, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1967-1971
Kudzu, Jackson, Mississippi, 1968-1972
Liberated Guardian, New York, New York
Liberation News Service, New York, New York (original headquarters)
The Last Times, San Francisco, California, 1967 (Charles Plymell)
Los Angeles Free Press, Los Angeles, California, 1964-1978 (new series 2005–ongoing)
Los Angeles Staff, Los Angeles, California (splintered from Los Angeles Free Press)
Madison Kaleidoscope, Madison, Wisconsin
Middle Earth, Iowa City, IA, 1967-1968
The Monocle, Tampa, Florida
New Age, Athens, Ohio
New York Ace, New York, NY, 1971-1972
NOLA Express, New Orleans, Louisiana
Northwest Passage, Bellingham, WA, 1969-1986
Old Mole, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Omaha Kaleidoscope, Omaha, Nebraska
Open City, Los Angeles, California, 1967-1969
Oracle of Southern California, Los Angeles, California
The Organ, San Francisco, California, 1970-1971
Other Scenes (dispatched from various locations around the world)
The Paper, East Lansing, Michigan
Peninsula Observer, Palo Alto, California
Philadelphia Free Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1968-1972
The Phoenix, Boston, Massachusetts
Pittsburgh Fair Witness, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1970-1973 (changed name from Grok)
Queen City Express, Cincinnati, Ohio
Quicksilver Times, Washington, DC, 1969-1972
The Rag, Austin, Texas, 1966-1977
Rat Subterranean News, New York, New York, 1968-1970 (later Women's LibeRATion)
Razzberry Radicle, Dayton, Ohio
The Realist
Rebirth, Phoenix, Arizona
Richmond Chronicle, Richmond, Virginia
Rising Up Angry, Chicago, Illinois, 1969-1975
Rock Creek Free Press, Washington, DC
Sabot, Seattle, Washington, 1970-1971
San Diego Door, San Diego, California, 1966-1970 (formerly Good Morning, Teaspoon)
San Diego Free Press, San Diego, California 1968-1970 (changed name to San Diego Street Journal)
San Francisco Oracle, San Francisco, California, 1966-1968
San Francisco Express Times, San Francisco, California, 1968-1969 (changed name to Good Times)
Second City, Chicago, Illinois
Space City, Houston, Texas, 1969-1972 (originally Space City News)
The Spectator, Bloomington, Indiana
Spokane Natural, Spokane, Washington, 1967-1970
Underground Press Syndicate (UPS)
Village Voice, New York, New York, 1955-ongoing
Vortex, Lawrence, Kansas
Washington Free Press, Washington, DC
Willamette Bridge, Portland, Oregon, 1968-1971
Women's LibeRATion, New York City
Yarrowstalks, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

List of US military GI underground press

The Ally, New York City, New York
The Bond, Berkeley, California
F.T.A., Fort Knox, Kentucky
Shakedown, Fort Dix, New Jersey
Vietnam GI, Chicago, Illinois, 1968-1969

List of FBI COINTELPRO "underground" news operations

The Armageddon News - Indiana University Bloomington (FBI-run underground newspaper)
The Chicago Midwest News (FBI-run underground news service)
The Longhorn Tale - University of Texas at Austin (FBI-run underground newspaper)
The New York Press Service - (FBI-run underground news service)
The Rational Observer - American University, Washington, D.C. (FBI-run underground news service)
The Pacific International News Service - San Francisco (FBI-run underground news service)

List of underground press in Canada

The Chevron - University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Fuddle Duddle - Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
The Georgia Straight - Vancouver, Canada
Harbinger, Toronto, Ontario
Logos, Montréal, Québec
The Underground Press, Snow Lake, Manitoba

Underground art

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Underground art, as with underground music and underground film, is a term that seeks to describe art forms that are aloof to the mainstream art world, are illegal, taboo, unconventional, rebellious or revolutionary. Underground art usually challenges or rejects the cultural status quo in some way, and may involve extreme doses of originality and experimentation in terms of its content, form or context.
Practitioners of underground art tend to distance themselves with the standards and traditions of mainstream culture, yet mainstream institutions, the mass media and corporations frequently try to associate themselves with so-called cutting edge and underground movements as a way of appealing to young and frequently jaded audiences. Art that is said to be underground may be made mostly in secret, have other artists as its primary audience, or maintain a strong cult following. Some art forms that may be considered underground include graffiti and street art, punk related art and design, protest art, art coming out of the international squat and intentional communities movements and some forms of performance art.
The term underground art can be considered paradoxical in the sense that as soon as specific examples of such art are defined or publicized, they cease to be truly underground anymore.

Underground music

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The style of underground music ranges from the 1960s psychedelic music of the US hippie counterculture, to the DIY anti-corporatism of 1970s-era punk rock, to the early 1990s-era of grunge, to 1970s and 2000s-era hip hop.
While the term comprises a range of different musical genres, they can typically share common values, such as the valuing of sincerity and intimacy; an emphasis on freedom of creative expression; an appreciation of artistic creativity. As well, while very few types of underground music are completely hidden—except perhaps the underground rock scenes in the pre-Gorbachev Soviet Union—the performances and recordings may be difficult to find for outsiders.
Some underground musical genres never left their non-mainstream roots, such as jagged, aggressive UK 82-style hardcore punk bands like Discharge. Some new age versions of underground music include Indie Rock. Some underground styles eventually became mainstream, commercialized pop styles, such as underground hip hop of the early 1980s, which eventually became popular. In the 2000s, the increasing availability of the Internet and digital music technologies made underground music easier to distribute using streaming audio and podcasts. Some experts in cultural studies now argue that that there is no underground because the internet has made what was underground music accessible to everyone at the click of a mouse. One expert, Martin Raymond, of London based company The Future Laboratory commented in an article in The Independent, saying trends in music, art and politics are:

... now transmitted laterally and collaboratively via the internet. You once had a series of gatekeepers in the adoption of a trend: the innovator, the early adopter, the late adopter, the early mainstream, the late mainstream, and finally the conservative. But now it goes straight from the innovator to the mainstream.

In effect, this means a boy band (for instance) could be influenced by a (formerly) obscure 1960's garage rock, early 1980s post punk, noise rock acts like Pussy Galore or even composers of avant-garde classical music like John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen and still remain recognisable as a boy band.

1 History
2 Radio formatting

History

The term underground music has been applied to several artistic movements, such as the psychedelic music movement of the mid-1960s, but the term has since then come to be defined by any musical artist/band that avoids becoming a trend/mainstream. Other early "underground" bands include the Velvet Underground, MC5, The Grateful Dead, Patti Smith, and the Stooges. Frank Zappa tried to define "underground" by noting that the "mainstream comes to you, but you have to go to the underground." In the 1960s, the term underground was associated with the hippie counterculture of young people who had dropped out of college and their middle class life to live in an off-the-grid commune of free love and cannabis. In modern popular music, the term “underground” refers to a performers or bands ranging from artists that do DIY guerilla concerts and self-recorded shows to those that are signed to small independent labels. In some musical styles, the term “underground” is used to assert that the content of the music is illegal or controversial, as in the case of early 1990s death metal bands in the US such as Cannibal Corpse for their gory cover art and lyrical themes. Black metal is also an underground form of music and its Norwegian scene are notorious for their association with church burnings, the occult, murders and their Anti-Christian views. All of extreme metal is considered underground music for its extreme nature.
Shlomo Sher's "philosophy for artists" argues that there are three common misconceptions about the "underground": that it refers exclusively to the rave/electronica scene; that it can be described with a vague, broad definition of "anything which is not mainstream"; and the myth that underground music is kept secret; he points out that no band or performer "exclud[es] virtually anyone or anything" using "secret passwords and hidden map points". Instead, Sher claims that "underground music" is linked by shared values, such as a valuing of grassroots "reality" over music with "pre-wrapped marketing glossing it up"; sincerity and intimacy; freedom of creative expression is valued over commercial success; art is appreciated as deeply meaningful fashion; and the Underground "difficult to find", because the scene hides itself from "less committed visitors" who would trivialize the music and culture.
In a Counterpunch magazine article, Twiin argues that "Underground music is free media", because by working "independently, you can say anything in your music" and be free of corporate censorship.The genre of post-punk is often considered a "catchall category for underground, indie, or lo-fi guitar rock" bands which "initially avoided major record labels in the pursuit of artistic freedom, and out of an 'us against them' stance towards the corporate rock world", spreading "west over college station airwaves, small clubs, fanzines, and independent record stores."Underground music of this type is often promoted through word-of-mouth or by community radio DJs. In the early underground scenes, such as the Grateful Dead jam band fan scenes or the 1970s punk scenes, crude home-made tapes were traded (in the case of Deadheads) or sold from the stage or from the trunk of a car (in the punk scene). In the 2000s, underground music became easier to distribute, using streaming audio and podcasts.
Even some musical styles that eventually became mainstream, commercialized pop styles started out as underground music. Late 1970s disco is often considered to be a very commercialized type of pop music. However, before disco's mainstream adoption in 1977 and 1978, disco records were underground music created by nightclub DJs for the gay dance club scene. Similarly, hip hop began "on the streets"; in the early 1980s, rappers did beatboxing and made up rhymes for tiny underground labels. Genres such as New Wave, no wave, noise, noise rock, alternative rock, grunge, various forms of heavy metal, grindcore, electronica, outsider music, and experimental music, also trace their roots to underground scenes.
A music underground can also refer to the culture of underground music in a city and its accompanying performance venues. The Kitchen is an example of what was an important New York City undrground music venue in the 1960s and 1970s. CBGB is another famous New York City underground music venue claiming to be "Home of Underground Rock since 1973".

Radio formatting

"Underground format" is a term used to describe a type of music radio programming in which underground-style music is played, usually in long blocks of two to three hours at a time, keeping talk to a minimum.Many colleges across the United States and around the world allow students the opportunity of hosting radio programs. On these stations underground music is played much more frequently than on commercial stations.

Underground Film

Underground film

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An underground film is a film that is out of the mainstream either in its style, genre, or financing. The first use of the term "underground film" occurs in a 1957 essay by American film critic Manny Farber, "Underground Films." Farber uses it to refer to the work of directors who "played an anti-art role in Hollywood." He contrasts "such soldier-cowboy-gangster directors as Raoul Walsh, Howard Hawks, William Wellman," and others with the "less talented De Sicas and Zinnemanns [who] continue to fascinate the critics." However, as in "Underground Press", the term developed as a metaphorical reference to a clandestine and subversive culture beneath the legitimate and official media.

In the late 1950s, "underground film" began to be used to describe early independent film makers operating first in San Francisco, California and New York City, New York, and soon in other cities around the world as well, including the London Film-Makers' Co-op in Britain and Ubu Films in Sydney, Australia. The movement was typified by more experimental filmmakers working at the time like Stan Brakhage, Harry Everett Smith, Maya Deren, Andy Warhol, Jonas Mekas, Ken Jacobs, Ron Rice, Jack Smith, George Kuchar, Mike Kuchar, and Bruce Conner.
By the late 1960s, the movement represented by these filmmakers had matured, and some began to distance themselves from the countercultural, psychedelic connotations of the word, preferring terms like avant-garde or experimental to describe their work.
Through 1970s and 1980s, however, "underground film" would still be used to refer to the more countercultural fringe of independent cinema. The term was embraced most emphatically by Nick Zedd and the other filmmakers associated with the New York based Cinema of Transgression and No Wave Cinema of the late 1970s to early 1990s.
In the early 1990s, the legacy of the Cinema of Transgression carried over into a new generation, who would equate "underground cinema" with transgressive art, ultra-low-budget filmmaking created in defiance of both the commercialized versions of independent film offered by newly wealthy distributors like Miramax and New Line, as well as the institutionalized experimental film canonized at major museums. This spirit defined the early years of underground film festivals (like the New York Underground Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Melbourne Underground Film Festival, Sydney Underground Film Festival, Hamilton Underground Film Festival, Toronto's Images Festival, and others), zines like Film Threat, as well as the works of filmmakers like Craig Baldwin, Jon Moritsugu, Carlos Atanes, Sarah Jacobson, Johnny Terris and Bruce La Bruce. In London the Underground resurgence emerged as a movement of Underground cinema clubs which included the radical open access group the Exploding Cinema.
By the late 1990s and early 2000s, the term had become blurred again, as the work at underground festivals began to blend with more formal experimentation, and the divisions that had been stark ones less than a decade earlier now seemed much less so. If the term is used at all, it connotes a form of very low budget independent filmmaking, with perhaps trangressive content, or a lo-fi analog to post-punk music and cultures. Taking place in basements across America, underground film has long had difficulties in gaining mainstream acceptance. Critics have further stated that underground film viewing is analogous with gang culture, violence, and drug use in minors.

1 Underground versus cult
2 Further reading
3 See also

Underground versus cult

The term "underground film" is occasionally used as a synonym for cult film. Though there are important distinctions between the two, a significant overlap between these categories is undeniable. The films of Kenneth Anger, for example, could arguably be described as underground, experimental and cult. However, a studio film like Heathers may have a cult following, but could not be accurately described as an underground film.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_film"

Cult following

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A cult following is a term used to refer to a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base. A common component of cult followings is the emotional attachment fans have with the object of the cult following, often identifying themselves and other fans as members of a community. Cult followings are often associated with niche markets or subcultures. Cult media are often associated with underground culture, and are considered too eccentric, bizarre, controversial or anti-establishment to be appreciated by the general public.
Many cult fans express a certain irony about their devotion. Sometimes, these cult followings cross the border to camp followings. Cult fans of director Ed Wood admire his films not because they consider them to be excellent, but because they are so bad that they become funny and curiously fascinating. The same phenomenon can be observed with things that are appreciated by a certain generation out of nostalgia or childhood memories.
Fans may become involved in a subculture of fandom, either via conventions, online communities, or through activities such as writing series-related fiction, costume creation, replica prop and model building, or creating their own audio or video productions based around the formats and characters.

1 Examples
2 See also
3 Further reading
4 References

Examples

Film director David Lynch has a large cult following

There isn't always a clear difference between cult and mainstream media. The film Pink Flamingos is known for its disgusting scenes, and only a small number of people are drawn to this movie. Therefore it can be classified as a cult movie. Franchises such as Star Trek, Star Wars, Batman, and Harry Potter have core groups of fanatical followers but still attract mass audiences, so they cannot be considered true cult films.
Quentin Tarantino's films borrow stylistically from classic cult movies, but are appreciated by a large audience, and therefore lie somewhere between cult and mainstream. Certain cult phenomena can grow to such proportions that they become mainstream. Fans who used to appreciate the cult item when it was still obscure sometimes lose interest when it becomes very popular.
Some cults are only popular within a certain subculture. The film Woodstock is especially loved within the hippie subculture. A Clockwork Orange a cult film for punks, skinheads and other groups. Certain mainstream icons can become cult icons in a different context for certain people. The mainstream film The Wizard of Oz is a cult film in gay culture. Reefer Madness was originally intended to warn the youth against drugs, but due to its ridiculous plot and cheap look, it is now often watched by stoned audiences, and has gained a cult following.
Anime, manga, kung fu films and kaiju are mainstream entertainment in Japan, but elsewhere are generally appreciated by a cult audience. Doctor Who is a prime time family show in Great Britain, but a cult series in the US. Also, the animated pre-school show Pocoyo has attracted a reasonably large cult following among viewers older than its target audience due to the show's humour and its narrator, Stephen Fry.
It often takes a few years before a cult starts to form around a particular film or band. Captain Beefheart's album Trout Mask Replica, Jim Carrey's film The Cable Guy and the TV series The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show were originally not that successful, but as time went by they were able to collect a cult following. In some cases this cult status is unexpected, like the Disney film Fantasia (1940), which was a flop at its release, but was reappreciated by fans of psychedelica in the 1960s. Other phenomena are specifically created and aimed at a cult audience, like the TV series The Young Ones or the drug oriented movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
In a BBC review of Farscape episode "Throne for a Loss", Richard Manning, the review writer said "Farscape is now officially a cult series because it's being shown out of sequence." The episode in question was actually shown as the second episode, after the Premier; despite originally being intended as the fifth episode to be shown.

Pricing

Goods acquired illegally take one of two price levels:

They may be cheaper than legal market prices. The supplier does not have to pay for production costs or taxes. This is usually the case in the underground economy. Criminals steal goods and sell them below the legal market price, but there is no receipt, guarantee, and so forth.
They may be more expensive than legal market prices. The product is difficult to acquire or produce, dangerous to handle or not easily available legally, if at all. If goods are illegal, such as some drugs, their prices can be vastly inflated over the costs of production.

Black markets can form part of border trade near the borders of neighboring jurisdictions with little or no border control if there are substantially different tax rates, or where goods are legal on one side of the border but not on the other. Products that are commonly smuggled like this include alcohol and tobacco. However, not all border trade is illegal.

Consumer issues

Even when the underground market offers lower prices, most consumers still buy on the legal market when possible, because:

They may prefer legal suppliers, as they are easier to contact and can be held accountable for faults;
In somejurisdictions, customers may be charged with a criminal offence if they knowingly participate in the black economy, even as a consumer;
They may feel in danger of being hurt while making the deal;
They may have a moral dislike of black marketing;
In some jurisdictions (such as England and Wales), consumers in possession of stolen goods will have them taken away if they are traced, even if they did not know they were stolen. Though they themselves commit no offence, they are still left with no goods and no money back. This risk makes some averse to buying goods that they think may be from the underground market, even if in fact they are legitimate (for example, items sold at a car boot sale).

But some actively prefer the underground market, particularly when government regulations and monopolies hinder what would otherwise be a legitimate competitive service. For example:

Unlicensed taxicabs. In Baltimore, it has been reported that many consumers actively prefer illegal taxis, citing that they are more available, convenient, and priced fairly.

Traded goods and services

Largest black markets	Estimated annual market value (Billion USD)
Total	1,100 or 1,400
Marijuana	142
Prostitution	108
Counterfeit technology products	100
Counterfeit pharmaceutical drugs	75
Prescription drugs	73
Cocaine	70
Opium and heroin	65
Web Video piracy	60
Software piracy	53
Cigarette smuggling	50

In developed countries, some examples of underground economic activities include:

Transportation providers

Where taxicabs, buses, and other transportation providers are strictly regulated or monopolised by government, a black market typically flourishes to provide transportation to poorly served or overpriced communities. In the United States, some cities restrict entry to the taxicab market with a medallion system— that is, taxicabs must get a special license and display it on a medallion in the vehicle. This has led to a market in Carpooling/illegal taxicab operation, although in most jurisdictions it is not illegal to sell the medallions themselves.

Illegal drugs

From the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many countries began to ban the keeping or using of some recreational drugs, such as the United States' war on drugs. Many people nonetheless continue to use illegal drugs, and a black market exists to supply them. Despite law enforcement efforts to intercept them, demand remains high, providing a large profit motive for organized criminal groups to keep drugs supplied. The United Nations has reported that the retail market value of illegal drugs is $321.6 billion USD.

Although law enforcement officers do capture a small proportion of the illegal drugs, the high and very stable demand for such drugs ensures that black market prices will simply rise in response to the decrease in supply—encouraging new distributors to enter the market. Many drug legalisation activists draw parallels between the illegal drug trade and the Prohibition of alcohol in the United States in the 1920s.
In the United Kingdom, it is not illegal to take drugs, but it is illegal to possess them. This can lead to the unintended consequence that those in possession may swallow the evidence; once in the body they are committing no crime.

Prostitution

Prostitution is illegal or highly regulated in most countries across the world. These places form a classic study of the underground economy, because of consistent high demand from customers, relatively high pay, but labor intensive and low skilled work, which attracts a continual supply of workers. While prostitution exists in almost every country, studies show that it tends to flourish more in poorer countries, and in areas with large numbers of unattached men, such as around military bases.
Prostitutes in the black market generally operate with some degree of secrecy, sometimes negotiating prices and activities through codewords and subtle gestures. In countries such as the Netherlands, where prostitution is legal but regulated, illegal prostitutes exist whose services are offered cheaper without regard for the legal requirements or procedures— health checks, standards of accommodation, and so on.
In other countries such as Nicaragua where legal prostitution is regulated, hotels may require both parties to identify themselves, to prevent the rise of child prostitution.

Weaponry

The legislatures of many countries forbid or restrict the personal ownership of weapons. These restrictions can range from small knives to firearms, either altogether or by classification (e.g. caliber, automation, etc.), to explosives. The black market supplies the demands for weaponry that can not be obtained legally, or may only be obtained legally after obtaining permits and paying fees. This may be by smuggling the arms from countries where they were bought legally or stolen, or by stealing from arms manufacturers within the country itself, using insiders. In cases where the underground economy is unable to smuggle firearms, they can also satisfy requests by gunsmithing their own firearms. Those who may buy this way include criminals, those who wish to use them for illegal activities, and collectors.
In England and Wales some kinds of arms designed for shooting animals may be kept at home but must be registered with the local police force and kept in a locked cabinet. Some people buy on the black market if they would not meet the conditions for registration— for example if they have a record of committing a criminal offense, however minor.
In some jurisdictions, collectors may legally keep antique weapons. Sometimes they must be disarmed (incapable of being fired); but sometimes they are so ineffective by modern standards that they are allowed to be kept intact. For example a blunderbuss or cannon is hardly likely to be used for a drive-by shooting.

Alcohol and tobacco

It has been reported that smuggling one truckload of cigarettes from a low-tax US state to a high-tax state can lead to a profit of up to $2 million. The low-tax states are generally the major tobacco producers, and have come under enormous criticism for their reluctance to increase taxes. North Carolina eventually agreed to raise its taxes from 5 cents to 35 cents per pack of 20 cigarettes, although this remains far below the national average. But South Carolina has so far refused to follow suit and raise taxes from seven cents per pack (the lowest in the USA).
In the UK it has been reported that "27% of cigarettes and 68% of roll your own tobacco [is] purchased on the black market".

Booze cruise

In the UK, the booze cruise— a day-trip ferry to continental Europe simply to get alcohol and tobacco at lower tax rates— is still very popular. Its popularity varies on the Euro to Sterling exchange rate, and the relative tax rates between the different countries. Some people do not even bother to get off the boat; they buy their stock on board and sail straight back. Ferry companies offer extremely low fares, in the expectation that they will make the money up in sales on the boat. The same system exists for boats between Liverpool and Dublin, Ireland.

Providing the goods are for personal consumption, "booze cruises" are entirely legal. Because there are no customs restrictions between European Union countries it is not strictly a black market, but closer to a grey market. The UK and Ireland are both European Union members and are both in a Common Travel Area so there are neither customs nor passport checks between the two countries.
There is however a thriving black market in goods, rubbing tobacco in particular, which have avoided the payment of excise duty. This is partly supplied by "booze cruises".

Copyrighted media

Street vendors in countries where there is scant enforcement of copyright law, particularly in Asia, often sell deeply discounted copies of films, music CDs, and computer software such as video games, sometimes even before the official release of the title. A determined counterfeiter with a few hundred dollars can make copies that are digitally identical to an original and suffer no loss in quality; innovations in consumer DVD and CD writers and the widespread availability of cracks on the Internet for most forms of copy protection technology make this cheap and easy to do.
This has proved very difficult for copyright holders to combat through the law courts, because the operations are distributed and widespread— there is no "Mr. Big". Since digital information can be duplicated repeatedly with no loss of quality, and distributed electronically at little to no cost, the effective underground market value of media is zero, differentiating it from nearly all other forms of underground economic activity. The issue is compounded by widespread indifference to enforcing copyright law, both with governments and the public at large. To steal a car is seen as a crime in most people's eyes, but to obtain illicit copies of music or a game is not.

Currency

Money itself is traded on the black market. This may happen for one or more of several reasons:

The government sets ("pegs") the local currency at some arbitrary level to another currency that does not reflect its true market value.
A government makes it difficult or illegal for its citizens to own much or any foreign currency.
The government taxes exchanging the local currency with other currencies, either in one direction or both (e.g. foreigners are taxed to buy local currency, or residents are taxed to buy foreign currency)
The currency is counterfeit.
The currency has been acquired illegally and need to be laundered before the money can be used.

A government may officially set the rate of exchange of its currency with that of other currencies— typically the US dollar. When it does, it is often pegged at an exchange rate that is artificially low— that is, below what would be the market value if it were a floating currency. Others in possession of the foreign currency, for example expatriate workers, will sell the foreign currency to buy local currency at higher exchange rates than they can get officially.
More rarely, a government may peg its currency too high. This tends to make the foreign currency become a de facto currency for the country, since it is easier for everyone to deal in the tradable foreign currency than the local one. Tourists and occasional visitors tend to deal solely in a major hard currency instead of the local currency. The whole country is essentially then trading on the black market. Some countries, such as Ecuador, abandoned their local currency and now use US dollars, essentially for this reason, a process known as dollarization. See also the example of the Ghanaian cedi from the 1970s and 1980s.
The Cuban convertible peso and US Continental dollar both have had black market rates significantly different from their face value.
If foreign currency is difficult or illegal for local citizens to acquire, they will pay a premium to acquire it. Taxation is generally less important but, if it is high enough, can still encourage a black market simply for tax avoidance even if currency trading is generally legal.

Fuel

In the EU it is not illegal for a person or business to buy fuel in one EU state for their own use in another, but as with other goods the tax will generally be payable by the final customer at the physical place of making the purchase.
Between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland there has often been a black market in petrol and diesel. The direction of smuggling can change depending on the variation of the taxes and the exchange rate between the Euro and Pound Sterling; indeed sometimes diesel will be smuggled in one direction and petrol the other.
In some countries diesel fuel for agricultural vehicles or domestic use is taxed at a much lower rate than that for other vehicles. This is known as dyed fuel, because a coloured dye is added so it can be detected if used in other vehicles (e.g. a red dye in the UK, a green dye in Ireland). Nevertheless, the saving is attractive enough to make a black market in agricultural diesel. In 2007 it was estimated that £350 million was not gained in potential revenue this way in the UK.

Appearance and disappearance

If an economic good is illegal but not seen by many in society as particularly harmful, such as alcohol under prohibition in the United States, the black market prospers. Black marketeers can reinvest profits in diverse legal or illegal activities, well beyond the original source of profit.
Some, for example in the marijuana-trade debate, argue for removing the underground markets by making illegal products legal. This would, in their view:

decrease the illegal cashflow, thus making the performance of other, potentially more harmful, activities financially harder
allow quality and safety controls on the traded goods, thus reducing harm to consumers
let the goods be taxed, providing a source of revenue
free up court time and prison space and save taxpayer money.

Modern examples

Wars

Black markets flourish in most countries during wartime. States that are engaged in total war or other large-scale, extended wars must necessarily impose restrictions on home use of critical resources that are needed for the war effort, such as food, gasoline, rubber, metal, etc., typically through rationing. In most cases, a black market develops to supply rationed goods at exorbitant prices. The rationing and price controls enforced in many countries during World War II encouraged widespread black market activity. One source of black-market meat under wartime rationing was by farmers declaring fewer domestic animal births to the Ministry of Food than actually happened. Another in Britain was supplies from the USA, intended only for use in USA army bases on British land, but leaked into the local native British black market.
During the Vietnam war, soldiers would spend Military Payment Certificates on maid service and sexual entertainment, thus supporting their partners and their families. If the Vietnamese civilian wanted something that was hard to get, he would purchase it at double the price from one of the soldiers, who had a monthly ration card and thus had access to the military stores.The transactions ran through the on-base maids to the local populace. Although these activities were illegal, only flagrant or large-scale black-marketeers were prosecuted by the military. Prohibition in the United States

Alcohol

Smoking

This effect is seen similarly today, when jurisdictions pass bans on smoking in bars and restaurants. In these jurisdictions, smokeasies arise which allow smoking despite the legal prohibition. In a sense the owner is not a black marketeer since he is not necessarily selling tobacco, but he profits by the sale of other goods on his premises (typically alcohol).
This phenomenon is very prevalent in many US state jurisdictions with smoking bans, including California, Philadelphia, Utah, Seattle, Ohio, and Washington, D.C..

Comparison with regular economy

Country	Estimated size of shadow economy in percent of GDP, average over 1990-93
Developing economies
Africa
Nigeria and Egypt	68-76%
Tunisia and Morocco	39-45%
Central and South America
Guatemala, Mexico, Peru and Panama	40-60%
Chile, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Brazil, Paraguay and Colombia	25-35%
Asia
Thailand	70%
Philippines, Sri Lanka and Malaysia	38-50%
Hong Kong and Singapore	13%
Transition economies
Central Europe
Hungary, Bulgaria and Poland	20-28%
Romania, Slovakia and Czech Republic	7-16%
Former Soviet Union
Georgia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Belarus	28-43%
Russia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia	20-27%
Developed economies
Greece, Italy, Portugal and Belgium	24-30%
Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Ireland, France, Spain, The Netherlands, Germany and Great Britain	13-23%
Japan, United States, Austria and Switzerland	8-10%

Market economy

Agorists and some other proponents of the free market argue that the black market is the most free market.Other regulated markets, they claim, suffer one way or another from undue interference in the general working of a free market.
Others argue that black markets are often controlled by other parties — such as a gang that aggressively regulates the drug trade in its territory — in a similar fashion to the government control of white markets, and are therefore not truly free markets. Agorists, however, use the term "red market" to distinguish between black markets in general and those based on violence and theft.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010