Special Edition Hip-Hop Podcast: Hopie, EyeASage, Nani

Enjoy.

Click on pics for music pages.

EyeASage (also has YouTube Channel) (left) and Nani (Right)

Hopie Spitshard’s album cover.

Intro by: Nam

Orwell Online

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Snowball, a British socialist blogger, writes:

If only Orwell were still around to see that certain things seem to run in the family of the British Union of Fascist leader…

Anyway, instead, we will have to make do with the fact that Orwell’s old diaries will be serialised online starting from tomorrow, day by day, here. Orwell I think would not only have approved of the blogosphere, he is a very much needed new presence in it given the kind of idiocy which currently dominates it, not least from those who claim to stand in his legacy yet cheer on imperialist war.

[Hat Tip: Bhupinder]

Friday Hip-Hop 8.08.08

This one runs around 12 minutes.

Enjoy.

Intro by: EyeASage

Lenosphere Round Up 7.31-8.07

Paul P. (U.S.) blogs:

“South Korean investigators, matching once-secret documents to eyewitness accounts, are concluding that the U.S. military indiscriminately killed large groups of refugees and other civilians early in the Korean War.”

Lenin (U.K.) blogs on the death of Solzhenitsyn (who wrote The Gulag Archipelago):

You can be sure that the late Alexander Solzhenitsyn is going to be celebrated in the most nauseating fashion in the mainstream press. Somewhat less importantly, the remaining supporters of the late USSR are going to waste some sorely needed energy laying a boot or two into the corpse of this “slanderer”. There is plenty to criticise. Solzhenitsyn was notable for his reactionary pro-Tsarist politics, and for his concessions to antisemitism. And, as just as many of his criticisms of the Stalinist terror were, they were both exaggerated and conjoined to a paranoid view about the supposed menace posed by the USSR.

MarxistFromLebanon (Lebanon) blogs at Renegade Eye:

Achievement of the Palestinian cause requires that all factions maintain a semblance of orderliness and keep their eyes on the price of independent statehood. In this both Fatah and Hamas have been miserable failures. Both have put partisan interests ahead of national ones and therefore have failed to maintain anything like a united Palestinian front. Even the mediation attempts of Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia have not been enough to curb the political infighting and internecine bloodshed that have served to further threaten the Palestinians’ very right to existence.

Hossam (Egypt) blogs:

Heightened security in North Sinai led to the delay of a proposed conference of Bedouin tribes in which they planned to make demands from the Egyptian government.
Earlier on Friday, hundreds of Bedouins had driven through towns between Rafah and Sheikh Zowayed to announce the conference, which was scheduled to take place on Saturday.
Although it did take place, many of the representatives were unable to attend due to the closure of all the roads leading to Irsal, Shabana south of Rafah where the meeting was held.

John Mullen (France) gives us a link to an article on the archives of Worker’s Fight and their views on homophobia:

Lutte Ouvrière Hebdo - Résultats de la recherche

Ici on trouvera le seul article dans les archives de “Lutte ouvrière” qui parle de l’homophobie…

Khaled El-Sawy (Egypt) blogs:

بقالي كثير قوي ما طلعتش على النت.. ورطت نفسي في اول السنة وحطيت خطة طموحة قوي.. خلصت فيلم كباريه، ما قعدتش، 3 أيام وكنت داخل فيلم أدرينالين، خلصته ما قعدتش برضه -الحمد لله طبعا- وقمت داخل ميكانو بعد 3 أيام برضه.. خلصته كنت فيصت تماما.. قمت شادد الفيشة وطالع مع أهلي

AkaiRed (Japan) blogs on the recent G-8 protests and has pics:

There’s a meeting in Tokyo tomorrow to report back on the anti-G8 demonstrations from last month and to look at where to from here for the movement. There will be speakers from ATTAC Japan, as well as solidarity activists and socialists who helped organise for the mobilisations. Details are here.

Snowball (U.K.) blogs:

I disagree with Lenin’s description of Batman as in some way a kind of ‘fascist’ film. Yeah, its about a ‘billionaire playboy with a penchant for sadistic violence’ but if glorifying violence and hard ’super-heroes’ make a film ‘fascist’ then half all all Hollywood action films must be in someway ‘fascist’. But then, how to explain their popularity? If Batman was in some way ‘fascist’, surely people would not come out of the cinema and tell their friends ‘yeah, its alright - go and see it’ in the numbers that people must have been doing to make it the massive box office success it has been. Politically and morally, the underlying message of the film may be more than dubious - but if we are going to have Batman films made, I for one would rather have Christian Bale keeping Batman quite a dark character in the manner of the early Tim Burton films rather than Hollywood serving up shit involving any of the following: Val Kilmir*, Chris’ O Donnell, George Clooney** or Jim Carrey. Artistically, both BatmanBegins and The Dark Knight work reasonably well as films, in my opinion. And for Marxists, artistic merit should count for something.

Gaber (U.K.) shows us some of his latest artwork (link not working, check the Aug. 4th post titled مباركفون - عيش احلى ما في اللحظه).

CF (France) blogs on the latest pronoucements by the Congress of South African Trade Unions:

Zwelinzima Vavi, secrétaire-général de Cosatu

‘Fear the wrath of the poor!’

C’est sous ce titre magnifique que le Mail & Guardian (Afrique du Sud) explique les raisons de la grève annoncée pour aujourd’hui, 6 août 2008, pour protester contre l’augmentation du coût de la vie. C’est aussi l’avertissement que veulent donner les dirigeants du principal syndicat du pays, Cosatu - celui même qui a joué un rôle déterminant dans l’affaiblissement du régime raciste -, à la nouvelle direction du parti au pouvoir, l’African National Congress.

Lenin (U.K.) blogs:

France played an active role in the 1994 Rwanda genocide, a report unveiled Tuesday by the Rwandan government said, naming French political and military officials it says should be prosecuted.

Name (Greece) blogs on the lack of money for health care:

Η ψυχική υγεία δεν μπορεί να είναι το φτωχό παιδί των υπηρεσιών υγείας. Εχουμε αρκετές σχιζοφρένειες και σοβαρές καταθλίψεις, που προσπαθούμε να ελέγξουμε με κατ οίκον νοσηλεία και με φαρμακευτική αγωγή, ώστε να τους κρατήσουμε κοντά στους δικούς τους».
Ο σιχαμένος κορδελάκιας θα είναι δίπλα μόνο στις δύο γιατρίνες, γιατί αυτό του είναι βολικό και τσάμπα, αλλά τα νοσοκομεία δουλεύουν με απλήρωτους γιατρούς και χωρίς προσωπικό εδώ και χρόνια και οι υποσχέσεις επαναλαμβάνονται αυτούσιες κάθε χρόνο (θα τις υλοποιήσει ο επόμενος…)

Lebanese Socialist (Lebanon) blogs:

The Jamestown Foundation provides an important update on the fury of Salafis in Lebanon. The Salafis received a double blow over the past two years; the crushing of Fatah al-Islam by the Lebanese army; and the expultion of Salafi fighters from west Beirut by Hizbollah during the “May events”.

Below is an edited version of a report posted by one of its experts, Abdul Hameed Bakier

Dave (U.K.) blogs:

An invasion of Zimbabwe wouldn’t help anyone, I get tired of explaining. It was his role in the struggle for independence that won Mugabe the people’s trust in the first place, and it was through selling out to become the local enforcer of the IMF that he lost it in the mid 90s.

There’s a standard response to this kind of objection: do you want another Rwanda? Surely those savages wouldn’t have been able to kill each other in such numbers if the civilised folk of the “International Community” had rolled in with tanks and bombs.

Well, a report’s just come out from the Rwandan government, accusing France of directly aiding and taking part in the 1994 genocide.

Truth and Consequences under the Israeli Occupation

Mohammed Omer, an award winning journalist from Palestine, writes:

This summer, at age 24, I was honored to learn that I had become the youngest journalist to receive the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, named for the famed American war reporter and awarded to journalists who counter propaganda with the truth.  Although Israel has sealed Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians in what many now call the world’s largest open-air prison, Dutch MP Hans Van Baalen lobbied the Israeli government to let me leave Gaza to receive my award in person.  Upon my return from London, I was surrounded by Israeli security officers.  I was stripped naked at gunpoint, interrogated, kicked and beaten for more than four hours.   At one point I fainted and then awakened to fingernails gouging at the flesh beneath my eyes.  An officer crushed my neck beneath his boot and pressed my chest into the floor.  Others took turns kicking and pinching me, laughing all the while.  They dragged me by my feet, sweeping my head through my own vomit.  I lost consciousness.  I was told later that they transferred me to a hospital only when they thought I might die.

White by the Numbers

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Tammerie, who is pursuing a dissertation on anti-racism and Christian theology, blogs:

By the numbers, white people still hold a preponderance of the positions that count, out of proportion to our presence in the population, from which I would argue we are able to maintain white-privileging control over the systems and institutions that shape our society, including business, legislative and judicial systems, property sales and management, education and health care. (Note that the percentages of non-white, non-male legislators was considered too small to be tabulated.)

Of course, not all white people are employed in positions that afford economic power and privilege. Whites represented 44 percent of the 37 million U.S. citizens living below the poverty line in 2006. The (historically constructed) sad thing about that is that most of the white people living in poverty think they have more in common with wealthy white people than they do people of color also dealing with poverty. And that keeps folks from banding together and working together to insist on change in an unjust reality.

The F-Word Blog First Women of Colour & Beauty Carnival kicks off…

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Soaring blogs:

This Carnival is intended to focus on beauty and what it means to and about women of color. In particular, I would like to see discussion go beyond a focus on the ways in which women of color can internalize self hatred to the ways in which women and communities of color recognize and celebrate beauty.

Submissions from women and men of color are welcome, focusing on these areas:

[Hat Tip: Jess]

BAYAN-USA Protests the State of the Union in the Philippines

Friday Hip Hop 8.01.08

[Update 8.02.08: the link messed up, here is the podcast...now working. ]

So, here is the latest edition of my hip-hop podcast. It runs longer than it should (18.5 minutes) but hopefully you’ll all enjoy it.

Intro by: From Monument To Masses

Lenosphere Round Up 7.24 - 7.31

Paul P. (aka Pauly) (U.S.) gives us a video from Socialism 2008 of Brian Jones speaking on Martin Luther King Jr.’s last struggle.

Mohammad (Egypt) blogs on the Mahalla 49:

A full report from the H.R.W. can be found here …

DJN (Canada) blogs:

A new edition of Chris Harman’s amazing book has been produced by Verso Books. Those of us in Canada can now snag a copy for $22 instead of double the price at which I bought my older copy. Harman’s book is the sort of thing that anybody searching for the “big picture” needs to read. It is all the better because it is incredibly readable, written in a style that eschews the dry, boring academic histories, and makes the subject the opposite of what we’ve probably all experienced in high school history classes.

And Lenin (U.K.) reviews the book.

Roobin (U.K.) blogs on the latest blow to Labour:

The Labour party is on the way out. It cannot save itself before 2010. The only other party able to take power is the Tories. There is not a movement back in favour of neo-liberalism, in fact, if anything, the Tories, for the time being, are trying to tack to the left of the Labour party. Meanwhile the SNP are building a movement that reaps the social democratic vote in Scotland.

With a Tory government and a social democratic electorate represented by nationalists in Scotland, the SNP’s moment will arrive. They will have the best, maybe only ever chance to separate the United Kingdom by constitutional means.

Sean Purdy (Brazil) blogs:

On this day in 1947, US President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act, which among other things, created the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA has been responsible for the some of the most appalling crimes against humanity and as the secret kidnappings and torture of supposed terrorists in the “War Against Terror” demonstrates, it is still at it.

CF (Fance) blogs on Obama and his “progressive” nature:

Barack Obama serait “un vrai progressiste” selon certains socialistes français, voire “un homme de gauche”. D’ailleurs sa popularité en France ne s’explique pas seulement par sa jeunesse et son charisme. Il jouit d’une très bonne image dans nos banlieues, non seulement parce qu’il est fils d’un couple mixte (avec en plus des antécédents musulmans) mais parce qu’il a la réputation de bien connaître et de se soucier des gens des quartiers pauvres.

C’est bien évidemment plus compliqué que cela. Obama est entre autres choses le candidat préféré d’une partie des plus grandes entreprises cotées à Wall Street. Il s’est prononcé en faveur de la peine de mort dans certains cas (est-ce par conviction ou par intérêt électoral ?). Ses propositions pour étendre la couverture médicale des Américains sont moins audacieuses que celles de plusieurs de ses ex-concurrents démocrates comme Clinton et Edwards. Il propose d’augmenter les dépenses militaires. Il s’est empressé dès son investiture d’affirmer son soutien sans faille à Israël. Il tient des propos belliqueux à l’égard de l’Iran comme n’importe quel néo-con. (Pourtant, on entend bien, il est “mieux que McCain”.)

Dave (U.K.) blogs on Italian legislation targeted against immigrants:

That on top of Nick Davies’ report last week on the fascist infiltration of the Italian police, well worth a read and not just for the cheap shudders.  It reminds us that fascism isn’t just about racism, it’s about smashing up any progressive or working-class movement that threatens the national elite and their rule.  The enemy within, as well as the foreigner.

Mustafa (Egypt) blogs on the release of detained youth activists:

اصدرت النيابة العامة قرارها بالافراج عن شباب 6 ابريل المعتقلين فى اسكندرية يوم 23 يوليو الماضى ..وقد اتى القرار بعد الضغط الاعلامى والحزبى على النائب العام ..بالاضافة الى انة كل جريمة هؤلاء الشباب انهم رفعوا اعلام مصر فى الشارع . وليكم بعض صور مظاهرة التى اقامها الشباب اما نقابة الصحفيين .

Snowball (U.K.) blogs on Tony Cliff:

I am not sure if this is helpful or just boosting the profits of one particular capitalist bookseller, but anyone who wants the complete selected works of revolutionary Marxist Tony Cliff (3 volumes) for under 20 quid, might like to check out here. Of course, those socialists who have the money should buy direct from the socialist publisher and bookseller, Bookmarks.

Lebanese Socialist (Lebanon) links an article from AFP:

Hundreds of people were still homeless on Sunday after the latest bout of deadly sectarian fighting in the northern Lebanese port city of Tripoli.

Army reinforcements were sent to Tripoli on Saturday after militants from the rival Sunni Muslim and Alawite (Shiite) communities agreed to halt clashes that erupted early Friday, killing nine people and wounding dozens more.

Fighters battled with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons causing massive damage to property and sending hundreds of people fleeing for cover from the neighbouring districts of Bab al-Tebbaneh and Jabal Mohsen.

Francis (Germany) blogs:

Wir konsequenten Kriegsgegner müssen schon im Vorfeld Fahne zeigen, denn die Bürgerlichen um Dr. Elvira Högemann. werden wie im Irak-Krieg mit Hilfe der Versöhnler und der Antideutschen auf den Krieg reagieren mit „Keine Gewalt”- Parolen und dem Verbot der Nennung der Aggressoren USA und Israel. Um die Schwankenden auf die Seite der Angegriffenen zu ziehen, ist es notwendig für uns, so früh wie möglich in Erscheinung zu treten.

AkaiRed (Japan) blogs:

Staring May 2, 2008, South Korean people took to the streets holding candle lights in protest to various policies (import of US beefs in danger of being infected with mad cow disease, privatizations of public broadcasting, health, and public corporations, and the grand-canal project) put forth by the Lee Myung-bak (LMB) government.

The protesters came from all walks of life including elementary school students to 80 years old seniors, ordinary working people to opposition parties National Assembly representatives. More than a million people just in the greater Seoul area alone gathered on June 10 for a peaceful candle light protest.

John Mullen (France) blogs on the appeal of Che to capitalists and activists alike:

Encore aujourd’hui, Ernesto “Che” Guevara a beaucoup pour attirer les anticapitalistes. Il apparaît tout d’abord, et même ses ennemis le reconnaissent, comme un homme intègre qui a tout sacrifié pour ses idées révolutionnaires. Comme celui qui a été au bout de lui-même pour lutter pour une cause qui lui apparaissait juste. Comme celui qui écrivit en 1965, dans sa lettre d’adieu à Fidel Castro : “Dans une révolution on triomphe ou on meurt”.

John Molyneux (U.K.) blogs:

I intend to argue a) that democratic centralism is ESSENTIAL for a revolutionary workers party to perform effectively as a leader of the working class in struggle; b) that far from being anti-democratic it is really the MOST democratic form of party organisation.

Toolab (Egypt) blogs on peasant solidarity with the working class in Egypt:

تضامنوا مع فلاحى مصر

• لمنع طردهم من أراضيهم الزراعية.
• ووقف انهيار الجدوى الاقتصادية لحرفة الزراعة إلى مادون حد الكفاف.

تناشد لجنة التضامن مع فلاحى الإصلاح الزراعى – مصر.. والشبكة المصرية للعمل الفلاحى كل الشرفاء فى مصر والمنطقة العربية والعالم دعم الفلاحين المصريين لمواجهة المحنة التى يتعرضون لها فى السنوات الأخيرة:

أولا : لوقف الحملة الجارية لطردهم من أراضيهم التى يزرعونها من نصف قرن أو يزيد.

وثانيا : لوقف الانهيار المتسارع للجدوى الاقتصادية لمهنة الزراعة إلى ما دون حد الكفافوذلك من خلال النشرالصحفى والإلكترونى وتوجيه الرسائل بمختلف الأدوات والوسائل

.

San Fran

The Porn Industry and Exploitation

I go from not supporting porn to being ambivalent about porn.  One thing that never wavers for me though is support for porn workers (when we say “Workers of the world unite!” that means all workers) and condemnation of porn industry executives.

Just when I thought I was completely anti-porn (well, I guess, me confuse) Renee blogs:

Normally I am in agreement with most things that Noam Chomsky has theorized but in this case I must respectfully disagree. The idea that the decision to work in the porn industry is simply a result of womens exploitation ignores the degree to which womens agency can make this an active choice. While all paid labour in a capitalist economy is defiantly exploitation, working in the porn industry is not more exploitative because what is being produced is sex, or rather the imitation of reciprocal sex.

Why is sex work necessarily more degrading than working at McDonalds, or a Dunkin Donuts for that matter? Both involve the sale of ones body, and labour power to a certain degree. Both involve not being adequately compensated vis a vis profits versus wage, yet pornography is deemed horribly degrading. I submit that this because womens sexuality is only culturally acceptable when it is virginal in nature.

Communicationism

Click on it hommie.

Image From:
Josh Smith

New Section

So, in case anyone hasn’t noticed yet, I have a new section in my right-side column.  It’s my podcast section.  All you guys need ta do is just click on the pics to get where you wanna go.  I update my music and news podcasts once a week.

Consuming Whiteness

Professor What If has a series called “Consuming Whiteness.” The first part is titled “What if whiteness doesn’t do a body good?” and the second it titled “What if you (don’t) got white skin?“.

Image From:
CounterPunch