Thursday, August 26th, 2004

The iPod Shuffle

Yeah, there’s a lot of politics going on this week. So here’s an article I’ve been waiting for–a look into the iPod Shuffle function.

Just got back from LA where I spent 13 hours on the road with the little thing. Here’s the last 50 songs it coughed up:

Passover Joy Division
Isisu Somhambi (Music Which Feeds The Guests) Mahotella Queens
Justice Tonight/Kick It Over The Clash
Waimanalo Blues Billy Kaui & Country Comfort
Why (Feat. Anthony Hamilton) Jadakiss
Just Another Soldier Minutemen
Adelita Trio Mocoto
Losing My Edge LCD Soundsystem
Mr. Nine Buju Banton
Everything’s Disappeared Steinski & Mass Media
Home Is Where The Hatred Is Gil Scott-Heron
Be Thankful For What You Got Donovan Carless
Night Nurse Gregory Isaacs
Straighten It Out Pete Rock & CL Smooth
Rat Race Gift Of Gab
Kid Charlemagne Steely Dan
Please Stay (Once You Go Away) Marvin Gaye
Wave Of Mutilation (U.K Surf Mix) Pixies
Intro: Live At Sting Ninja Man 0:51
Blackjack Tortoise 4:07 Standards
Freedom Suite I: Freedom II:Wanting III:To Be Free Young Disciples
Incredible M Beat Feat. General Levy
Guararey De Pastora Los Van Van
Solo Soy Un Van Van Los Van Van
Flowers Ghostface Killah F. Raekwon, Method Man & Superb
Holy Thursday David Axelrod
Sax Hoodlum Major Force Productions
It Serves Me Right John Lee Hooker
Chorou, chorou João Donato
Maggie’s Farm Rage Against The Machine
Me And Jesus The Pimp In A ’79 Granada Last Night The Coup
Finally Got Myself Together (I’m A Changed Man) The Impressions
Disc Jockey Skank King Tubby 3:41
There You Go Fania All-Stars
Paid Not Played Buju Banton
Down In Rwanda smith&mighty
Time Bomb Rancid
The Demon Pt. 2 Catalyst
London David Axelrod
Sean Flynn The Clash
A rã João Donato
Bummed Out City Joe Strummer And The Mescaleros
Positron Island Drexciya
One Session (Featuring Altered Egos) Lyrics Born
Fire Fire T.O.K.
Hora Derezar (1974) Mestre Nago
Naima Maulawi
Babylon Ah Listen Sizzla
Red Bus Needs To Leave! DJ Shadow
Ndongoy Daara Orchestra Baobab

I guess if the iPod favors Buju, Brazilian, Axelrod, Quannum, and Joe Strummer, who am I to complain?

posted by @ 9:27 am | 1 Comment

Thursday, August 26th, 2004

Jane and Naomi on Iraq

Josh Clover’s great post on dancing and fighting in Iraq reminded me to big up Naomi Klein’s piece in Harper’s this month. (Not online, because Harpers is so old school their website has the cover from two months ago as their current issue.)

Klein argues that the line that Bush and the neocons went into Iraq without a plan is patently WRONG. They went in to Iraq to turn it into a neocon free-market wet dream: no trade or capital restrictions, no unions, no wages, no jobs, no nothing. Basically opening the place up for Halliburton-Bechtel-Walmart-McDonald’s-Starbucks to plunder. A Baghdad Year Zero with Bush’s man Paul Bremer on the reset button.

Klein describes how Bremer attempted to do through the CPA everything the IMF would like to do in every other country, but can’t, because of those funny ideas commonly known in international circles as self-determination and self-governance.

She then traces–in her usual brilliant way–how the invisible hand turns into a Fallujah-to-Najaf pimp-slap, encouraging the armed resistance that now, in very real terms, threatens the neocons in military, political and even ideological terms.

It’s fucking definitive. If you need to read one article explaining everything about Iraq, this is the one.

posted by @ 8:48 am | 0 Comments

Thursday, August 26th, 2004

Let Em March

Today’s poll from NYC ABC affiliate: 71% of New Yorkers think the Central Park protests should be allowed.

Also an updated link below in the last post on this topic.

posted by @ 8:14 am | 1 Comment

Thursday, August 26th, 2004

Jack Ryan Beware!

From Greg Palast’s website comes this headline: Prostitutes with AIDS to seduce Republican visitors.

posted by @ 8:05 am | 0 Comments

Wednesday, August 25th, 2004

Uh Oh

The State Supreme Court has denied UFPJ’s request to demonstrate in Central Park. (More here.)

What’s the significance of this? The Park held great symbolic value, as it has been the site of historic anti-war demonstrations over the years. But much more importantly, if not widely discussed, it gave the demo organizers a way to limit the possibilities of violence.

Organizers know that over the last 5 years since WTO, police departments and authorities across the country have figured out many ways to pen in protesters and limit their movement, most of which involve heavy uses of force and are strictly about containment. These have been developed in reaction to the headless quality of such demonstrations, in which there are always blocs of protesters who will stage unpredictable marches, sit-ins, or other tactics. The result of post-WTO containment strategies, however, has been the increased potential for nonviolent protesters to get hurt.

Central Park at least offered the possibility to stage a large peaceful demonstration, expanding the anti-war and anti-Bush message to attract families and nontraditional demonstrators. Instead the city is inviting madness to the streets of New York. Just like ’68 and ’92, it’ll be some crazy Year of the Monkey shit, for sure.

Is the City making a huge strategic miscalculation or is this all part of their plan?

UPDATED: Reports this past weekend had some Republican party leaders crowing that they would welcome any street chaos as an image with which they could lambaste Kerry and paint the Democrats as extremist and unpatriotic and, yup, down with the domestic terrorists.

Turning down the Central Park permit means a bunch of things:

1) If protest organizers stick with an older plan of marching on the Westside Highway, they won’t be seen by many city-dwellers and are denied good photo opps. How urgent is a shot of protesters marching past the Chelsea Piers?

2) If they stick with the Seventh Avenue plan, they encounter lots of risks. They don’t have a destination to keep most people moving toward, and the Frozen Zone will be on lockdown. Big, bad, ugly scene.

3) If they demonstrate in Central Park anyway, they also risk clashes, fines, and legal issues.

In the first option, the protesters get upstaged in the media. Bad pictures, low coverage. In the last two, the Republican spin-meisters get their blood and their rhetorical victory.

posted by @ 5:41 pm | 0 Comments

Friday, August 20th, 2004

What You’re Getting Clobbered With

From today’s NY Times:

“High-definition cameras that photograph the undercarriages of trucks. A shiny new Italian-made helicopter with its ‘night sun’ floodlight. Little handsaws straight out of auto-body shops that can cut through chains linking protesters. A metal barrier that will stop a truck cold. Dogs that signal they have smelled explosives by simply sitting down…”

Here’s more on the Long Range Acoustic Device. It’s not a Bose subwoofer.

Meanwhile, here’s Tom Hayden on NYC ’04. And more FBI follies.

posted by @ 7:59 am | 1 Comment

Friday, August 20th, 2004

The Fourth Unheard: Twin Cities Rap

On the heels of Egon’s journey into Connecticut rap comes Peter Scholtes’ journey into the history of Minnesota rap.

Do you want more? You got it.

Here once again, for the benefit of us die-hards and all those funk-faking front-like-they-know-it-alls, is real hip-hop scholarship.

Someone–one of you gate-keepers out there that have been killing trees and wasting plastic on the wrong people–please please please please give this man what he needs to do a book, a CD compilation, a DVD, anything he wants.

While we’re at it, cop these books:

Freddy Fresh’s The Rap Records

Joe Schloss’s Making Beats

Like the man said: And if you don’t know…get an intern or a work-study.

posted by @ 7:00 am | 0 Comments

Thursday, August 19th, 2004

Still More Evidence The Reeps Are Imploding

This column by former soldier David Hackworth has resurfaced as senators inquire into the potentially biggest financial scandal in Iraq to date. $8.8 billion in missing funds to Iraq. Yup, BILLION. Does it involve Halliburton and Rumsfeld? Bet.

posted by @ 2:38 pm | 0 Comments

Thursday, August 19th, 2004

The Emerging Democratic Majority?

More Blue Vs. Red analysis in this new book by a group of liberals backed by one really rich dude. They’ve been running these interesting print ads this past week juxtaposing people like Michael Moore (metro) vs. Mel Gibson (retro).

The argument as far as I can tell isn’t that new–blue states with urban centers end up sending lots of money to red states that are largely rural. Red states are overrepresented in Congress and tend to suck up resources through subsidies for agriculture and forestry, which in turn literally starve people in the cities. What may be somewhat new is the suggestion that “metro” america can simply outvote “retro” america, establishing a new liberal majority.

Interesting to see if this book takes off, as Kevin Phillips Emerging Republican Majority did back in 1969 at the dawn of the Nixon era.

The entire book is downloadable here.

posted by @ 8:33 am | 0 Comments

Thursday, August 19th, 2004

Government’s Code Orange Strategy UPDATE

Today’s AP story is headline at CNN:

“The FBI anticipates violent protests at the upcoming Republican National Convention in New York but does not have enough evidence to move against any group or person, the bureau’s top terrorism official said Wednesday.”

and this…

“Concern over the convention comes amid heightened security across New York over fears that foreign terrorists might strike the city again. New York remains on a ‘high’ terrorism alert level, while most of the country is on elevated alert.

Federal investigators have infiltrated some organizations and are monitoring plans for protests being published on the Internet. The FBI also interviewed some protesters around the country before last month’s Democratic convention in Boston and in anticipation of the GOP convention.

‘We don’t have any specific plot where we have all the variables we need to go out and take pre-emptive and judicial action,’ said Gary Bald, assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division.”

Note that this spin-recontrol press conference came two days after the NY Times published its front-page story on FBI monitoring of protesters, which have already called pre-emptive. In any case, now the government”s Code Orange strategy is out there in the open: again, link the anti-war movement to Al-Qaeda, create a domestic-to-global-terror continuum that just doesn’t exist.

posted by @ 6:39 am | 0 Comments



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