Brilliant critique of the predator drones. Bring it funky uncle.
America launched Predator drones against a sixth country recently — Somalia. The pilotless killer aircraft have now been used in Pakistan (by Bush something like 40 times in eight years, by Obama several hundred times in two and a half years!) as well as in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and now Somalia. (Funny — I don’t recall a declaration of war in any of those conflicts.) The Predator has to be the most cowardly, disgusting, and counterproductive (because of the additional enemies it makes for America) weapon in the history of warfare. I predicted many years ago that violent video games were just training and not-so-subtle indoctrination for the real thing, and now we have it — operators sit in comfort somewhere in the continental USA, fondle their obscene joy sticks, and people (innocent? guilty? terrorists? civilians?) die thousands of miles away. Predator operators are not heroes — they are cowardly ignorant nauseating scum, and Obama has proven himself to be a rabid war criminal. The American people will suffer the payback for these crimes for generations. We are not at war with Pakistan or Yemen or Somalia. No one in this country really knows who is being killed. This is just old-fashioned murder, not war, except that it is the most cowardly method of murder ever devised. Obama will retire into well-protected comfort, while you and I and other relatively innocent Americans have been made into legitimate targets wherever we go in the world.
Presidential politics might be America’s greatest spectacle. Matt Taibbi writes a nice rant on Michelle Bachmann in the new Rolling Stone. The piece is an enjoyable introduction into the legacy of irrationality presented by the now-presidential candidate. I’m interested in a paragraph on page two, where Taibbi talks about how mockery and disagreement are used as a fuel to turbo-charge her desire to win.
Snickering readers in New York or Los Angeles might be tempted by all of this to conclude that Bachmann is uniquely crazy. But in fact, such tales by Bachmann work precisely because there are a great many people in America just like Bachmann, people who believe that God tells them what condiments to put on their hamburgers, who can’t tell the difference between Soviet Communism and a Stafford loan, but can certainly tell the difference between being mocked and being taken seriously. When you laugh at Michele Bachmann for going on MSNBC and blurting out that the moon is made of red communist cheese, these people don’t learn that she is wrong. What they learn is that you’re a dick, that they hate you more than ever, and that they’re even more determined now to support anyone who promises not to laugh at their own visions and fantasies.
It isn’t any secret, I think Curren$y is the best emcee doing his thing right now.
Here is my short list of why y’all should embrace the Curren$y Spitta and buy his new record Weekend at Burnies.
Vancouver rioters after the NHL loss. Gotta admit these guys would look a lot more cool flashing the 'jet plane' hand sign, right?
1. Awkward hip hop fans need something better to do with their hands. We know that most people who listen to hip hop are really awkward rather than cool (myself included). (Hop hop artists, on the other hand, are quite cool). Hip hop offered many non-gang affiliates the chance to have something to do with their hands. Almost all of the ‘west coast,’ ‘east coast,’ pistol signs, or mimicking of supposed crip twisting of fingers is a terrible look.
Admittedly, most of us know Curren$y’s hand sign (which mimics the flying jet) as the ‘hang loose’ hand sign. In Hawaii, it’s known as shaka — a polycultural vaguely corporate ‘greeting with the aloha spirit.” Hey, there are worse things to throw up.
2. Curren$y and his crew seem to be working hard to get better.
I love the arrogant rappers, but it is refreshing to hear someone simply confident in their abilities. Curren$y writes rhymes that don’t alienate the listener with cleverness. He models working at his craft — practicing writing better smooth rhymes. As a result of their work, he and his jets crew: Young Roddy and Trademark the Skydiver, are getting better at not only rhyming, but also sounding better. Witness the enjoyable punch lines and nicely timed pause in Trademark’s verse on “Still” above.
3. Weed songs vs. coke songs or representations of wealth in a depression. Curren$y rhymes about smoking pot. A lot. Living in Humboldt county, this isn’t all that strange to me. Lets put Curren$y’s rhymes about cannabis in the context of the prevailing hip hop culture for self-expression about substances.
You could argue that expressing love for particular substances is part of selling yourself as an emcee. Most commercially successful artists have identified substance use as part of their image through lyrics and album covers. In the case of most so-called gangsta rappers, the discussion is often tied to cocaine trafficking (Gucci Mane, Clipse, Young Jeezy, Dipset, Jay-Z, E-40, Eazy-E, Ghostface Killah, and so on.) This creates a fascinating language used most often to communicate wealth. Lifestyles of the rich and famous articulated in bricks, kilos, birds, scales, Tony Montana . . .
In the artificially inflated economy of the early 2000s, these cocaine rhymes matched up nicely with the garish wealth of a society manifested in colonial wars and represented by an expressly “business-friendly” government. Those years also meant the rise of a massive police state, prisons, and new laws against gang offenses. One reason we keep alive the stories of outlaw dope dealers in rapping is because we live in a society that is increasingly controlled and policed — the idea that some people get to get away with it is immensely reassuring to non-outlaw folks.
Don’t get me wrong — Curren$y is still selling status, wealth and power in his rhymes. Curren$y isn’t rapping about selling drugs, instead he rhymes about how much he has to smoke. I think he has adjusted to the economic realities of a society in a depression and provided a slightly more inviting series of symbols for that power.
4. He sounds good, and has a back catalog worth examining. If you get Weekend at Burnies and find it works for you, here are the rest of my Curren$y recommendations in order.
First –> mixtape: Independence day
Second –> mixtape: Covert Coup
Third –> album Pilot Talk II
Fourth –> mixtape Fear and Loathing in New Orleans
Fifth –> mixtape return to the winners circle
sixth –> mixtape Smokee Robinson
seventh –> album Pilot talk I
You can easily add in the other affiliated projects, I like the “Jet Life to the next life” mixtape, and the wiz/Curren$y mixtape “How fly.”
New York City’s JFK airport has had to close one of their runways because of turtle presence on the runway.
The runway becomes a turtle crossing every year around this time as the terrapins gear up to reproduce.
“They look for sandy spots to lay their eggs,” Mr. Kelly said, “and there is an ideal location on the other side of Runway 4L. They come out of the water and cross the runway to lay their eggs in the sand.”
Usually the impact of human development obscures animal use of such land. In this case, we have a clear visibility of the couple of million years where turtles strolled the same path to drop their eggs. A couple of decades ago, humans built an airport blocking turtle-egg-dropping zone. Visibility in that moment where Mr. Kelly notes that the spot on the other side of runway 4L is “ideal.”
I’m enjoying Sparky‘s posts over at womanist musings. Here is the kick off of the most recent post:
So it’s time for me to settle some accounts here I think. So, to straight, cis people who support GBLT rights – what do I owe you?
A) Gratitude
B) Patronage of your business
C) My vote for your party
D) My buying your products
E) My reading and linking to your site
F) My contributing to your endeavors
G) The benefit of the doubt in all future privileged fails
H) Not a bloody thing
Of course the correct answer is H, not a bloody thing, because I don’t owe people for recognising my humanity or for recognising that society’s refusal to treat me as a full person.
I bet if you enjoyed punk rock music in the nineties you have a scar from a Fishbone show. I’m pretty sure that the enthusiastic Fishbone audience of Burlington Vermont in 1992 (maybe 1993?) are responsible for the cracked rib floating around in my chest. Like any other Fishbone fan, I ain’t mad.
If you ever listened to Fishbone, saw them live, or encountered them in any way, you cheered them on. They were so good that any fan with a heart wished that every other rock/punk/funk/soul/energy fiend would see clear to loving Fishbone too.
I saw them again maybe three years ago at an outdoor festival in Northern California and I thought my heart was going to explode from the energy.
Now we have a new documentary on Fishbone. Screw the narrative structure, if this movie has ten minutes of live footage, I’m buying it.
Some of the most significant news stories that center on African women in recent years have been about female genital mutilation or FGM. (Interesting footnote, I’ve noticed that the choice of language between ‘female genital surgery” and “female genital mutilation” is treated as a bright-line for the writer’s politics about the issue itself. What is interesting to me is how many of those who choose ‘mutilation’ quickly shorten the phrase to the acronym FGM, arguably obscuring the linguistic elevation of the act from ‘surgery’ to ‘mutilation’).
Rather than forcing readers to guess about my politics from my choice of language, I’ll be clear: I think the practice of FGM is terrible.
Female genital surgery is terrible and the stories about it are often recounted by westerners as a means of distancing, otherizing, and even animalizing African families are also toxic. The approach to simply wield the tragedy as a moral panic — implying that somehow parents in Africa don’t love their kids doesn’t help change genital surgery.
Tostan does. Tostan is an African NGO that has a lengthy track-record of respectfully engaging with communities about the importance of strong women and girls. Tostan runs 30-month community empowerment projects, one of which, in Gambia, has resulted in 117 communities declaring their abandonment of FGM and child marriage.
Mr. Alagie F. Jallow said the day is a historic one as the participating communities have registered their achievements and positive social transformations. He said over one hundred and seventeen communities in Basse, Jimara, Tumana, Kantora, Wuli and Sandu districts, including the adopted communities, have come together to openly declare their abandonment of female genital cutting, early and forceful marriage in URR.
He said this historic moment came about after the participating communities have undergone an intensive three year holistic community empowerment programme led by facilitators through social mobilisation and sensitisation activities by the team, CMC members and the communities. He said the training was centred around issues affecting the health and well being of women and girls as violations of fundamental human rights as enshrined in the Universals Declaration of Human Rights, Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights amongst others to which the Gambia is a signatory.
He said these human rights are also part of the Kobi one modules of the Tostan Community Empowerment Programme (CEP). He said the CEP is not only focusing on harmful traditional practices but a holistic approach to community led sustainable development covering themes on democracy and good governance, human rights and responsibilities, problem solving process, health and hygiene, literacy and management skills as well as feasibility study and introduction to small micro project implementation.
I assume that most of you have encountered the recent exchanges between Dilbert author Scott Adams and journalists from Salon and the Jezebel. If not, basically, the Dilbert-dude said that rape was an inevitable part of men’s sexuality. He agreed to some email exchanges, some of which make crystal clear Scott Adam’s privilege.
Here is my favorite quote:
The actual point of the earlier blog post you mentioned was that men don’t argue in situations where the cost of doing so is greater than the gain. The world is watching you make that true for me right now. This debate will probably reduce my income by a third, as feminist forces have already mobilized and started to ask newspapers to drop Dilbert. That’s the sort of risk that men don’t have when they engage in a debate with other men.
It’s nice that he explicitly outlines the team-behavior expected of other men under patriarchy. Hey Scott dude, this is another dude guy, telling you that you are an idiot. I’m also sending an email to my local paper requesting that your comic be dropped from the newspaper.
On Thursday evening LulzSec released what it said were hundreds of internal documents from the Arizona Department of Public Safety, including material related to border patrol and counterterrorism operations. It said it was taking aim at the agency because of Arizona’s anti-immigrant policies.
Wax Poetics, the National Geographic of record collectors has released a 10 minute documentary on the funk combo East of Underground. Six drafted service members stationed in Germany made up the band. They tied for first place in a talent show performing tight covers of funk and soul tunes. They recorded in a radio station. Only a couple copies of the record were pressed by the Army. The vinyl was discovered, coveted and then shared thanks to a re-release by Wax Poetics in the late 2000s.
–> Lewis Hitt, the guitar player is the only band member who has come forward. He provides some cool insights. I liked his story about the lead singer’s Afro and a visiting general.
–> Given that Hitt implies that most of the songs were chosen because the band was critical of the war in Vietnam, it is interesting that the Curtis Mayfield cover:”(Don’t Worry) if there’s Hell below, we’re all gonna go” gets a four minute video accompanied by helicopter gunship footage.
This website is intended for educational purposes. We attempt to make sure that all external artifacts, including article quotes, photos, graphics, and music correctly attribute the creators and sources.
If you are the owner of any of the media on this website and you would like it taken down, please contact us and we will be glad to respect your wishes.
Life of refinement 