i-eclectica.org

The pollies are getting more and more into putting their own sticky net of deceit over the internet. Take the Yanks: Hillary Clinton, whose husband Bill had the foresight to throw his weight behind web 2.0 already during his presidency, used the second generation of web-based services to announce her blog as a way to explore the idea of running for US President. Not long after she turned to webcast to stream the announcement of her candidacy. Another high profile example is Barack Obama, who has launched Obama’08, a website which his supporters can use to create social-networking groups, help raise money, organise and blog on his behalf. Popular social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace all have a strong presence established by the three top presidential hopefuls Clinton, Obama and John Edwards, each attempting to create a new generation of suckers for their lies and deception?

Here of course we have Steve Fielding’s Video News as part of his site, but that’s not web 2.0, and it seems most other pollies just have their individual pages on parliamentary or party websites; we are always a bit slower - in this case I’d say: luckily ;).

To sum it all up in way, I think this is quite a good definition for ‘politician’ from The American Heritage Dictionary: “One who seeks personal or partisan gain, often by scheming and maneuvering” … and we’ll see plenty of that in cyberspace in the very near future.

By Molly Steenson

Hurtling down the road to the Black Rock Desert, the colors paint themselves like a spice cabinet — sage, dust, slate gray. Maybe you’re in your trusty car, the one that takes you to and from work every day. Perhaps you’ve got a spacious RV, your Motel 6 on wheels for the next days in the desert. Or you’re driving your glittering art car, complete with poker chips and mirroring to do a disco ball proud.

The two-lane highway turns off onto a new road. You drive slowly onto the playa, the 400 square mile expanse known as the Black Rock Desert. And there you’ve touched the terrain of what feels like another planet. You’re at the end — and the beginning — of your journey to Burning Man.

You belong here and you participate. You’re not the weirdest kid in the classroom — there’s always somebody there who’s thought up something you never even considered. You’re there to breathe art. Imagine an ice sculpture emitting glacial music — in the desert. Imagine the man, greeting you, neon and benevolence, watching over the community. You’re here to build a community that needs you and relies on you.

You’re here to survive. What happens to your brain and body when exposed to 107 degree heat, moisture wicking off your body and dehydrating you within minutes? You know and watch yourself. You drink water constantly and piss clear. You’ll want to reconsider drinking that alcohol (or taking those other substances) you brought with you — the mind-altering experience of Burning Man is its own drug. You slather yourself in sunblock before the sun’s rays turn up full blast. You bring enough food, water, and shelter because the elements of the new planet are harsh, and you will find no vending.

You’re here to create. Since nobody at Burning Man is a spectator, you’re here to build your own new world. You’ve built an egg for shelter, a suit made of light sticks, a car that looks like a shark’s fin. You’ve covered yourself in silver, you’re wearing a straw hat and a string of pearls, or maybe a skirt for the first time. You’re broadcasting Radio Free Burning Man — or another radio station.

You’re here to experience. Ride your bike in the expanse of nothingness with your eyes closed. Meet the theme camp — enjoy Irrational Geographic, relax at Bianca’s Smut Shack and eat a grilled cheese sandwich. Find your love and understand each other as you walk slowly under a parasol. Wander under the veils of dust at night on the playa.

You’re here to celebrate. On Saturday night, we’ll burn the Man. As the procession starts, the circle forms, and the man ignites, you experience something personal, something new to yourself, something you’ve never felt before. It’s an epiphany, it’s primal, it’s newborn. And it’s completely individual.

You’ll leave as you came. When you depart from Burning Man, you leave no trace. Everything you built, you dismantle. The waste you make and the objects you consume leave with you. Volunteers will stay for weeks to return the Black Rock Desert to its pristine condition.

But you’ll take the world you built with you. When you drive back down the dusty roads toward home, you slowly reintegrate to the world you came from. You feel in tune with the other dust-covered vehicles that shared the same community. Over time, vivid images still dance in your brain, floating back to you when the weather changes. The Burning Man community, whether your friends, your new acquaintances, or the Burning Man project, embraces you. At the end, though your journey to and from Burning Man are finished, you embark on a different journey — forever.

[For more info on the Burning Man festival check their website]

It took a couple of songs for me to get into Panorama by Braintax, but then the album began to grow on me and beginning with the second round of listening I now really like it.

Braintax (recording name of Joseph Christie, born 1973) has been in business since 1992, and suprisingly this is only his second full length album, following on from the 2002 release of ‘Birofunk’. Nevertheless, he is one of the UK’s Hip Hop luminaries, known for his music as well as being founder (with Breaking the Illusion) and owner of Low Life Records, the UK’s premier and longest running Hip Hop record label to consistently release records. Braintax is seen as one of the most important and influential British Hip Hop artists of the second generation.

Panorama is very much an album of our political times. Al-Jazeera, the environment, refugees, Bush and Blair are all packed into its rhymes. Middle Eastern flavours weave and waft through the production, with political images cutting through: “Oil men, tugging on puppet strings, and the news is skewed, it’s a load of spin”. Panorama takes a vantage point and from there looks at the bigger picture - hence the title. Its creator explains: “the whole point of Panorama is to think outside the box, see the bigger picture and broaden our minds.” And Braintax certainly achieves this, with deep and complex lyrics that often are unashamedly and unflinchingly political.

Topics covered include global politics - see the rabid ‘Syriana Style’ or the masterfully empathetic ‘The Grip Again’; environmental concerns through ‘Exit Plans’; race issues and home affairs on ‘Anti-Grey’, and the Thatcher dominated 1980s with ‘Decade’. Interludes between tracks include speeches from journalist Robert Fisk and George Galloway complementing and continuing the record’s overall world view perspective. It’s fair to say this isn’t your average British rapper making another average rap album.

The music complements the thoughtful, hard hitting and reflective words and feelings. I quite like the sampling, the style variations and the flow of words and melodies. The beats range from electro experimentation to boom-bap to club bangers, with Braintax himself manning the dials on several tracks. I’m just not so sure though that Braintax’ voice is his strength; maybe I’m just more drawn to the range and gutsy feel of black voices. He does have other contributing vocalists, like Beat Butcha of Halal Beats and Sammy Jay, who for me compensate for what’s missing a bit from the main protagonist. Nevertheless: it’s a great Hip Hop album.

Panorama - come and admire the view!

Track listing:

1. All I Need
2. Can We Skit
3. Syriana Style
4. Monsoon Funk
5. Good Or Bad (featuring Mystro)
6. Anti-Grey (featuring Dubbledge)
7. Last Tenner
8. The Grip Again (a day in the life of a suicide bomber)
9. Pick A Subject (featuring Verb T)
10. Decade
11. Run The Yards
12. Back To The Riviera
13. Exit Plans

‘Robbers & Cowards’ is Cold War Kids’ debut album. Released October 2006, it apparently became the blog music talk of the end of the year. It’s a wonderful indie album, that MYSPACE MUSIC describes much better than I can: “Reagan babies, missile fears, and international blues. Cold War Kids started with jangly guitar, hand claps, and a Harmony amp in a storage room atop Mulberry Street restaurant in downtown Fullerton, CA. For the first practices, having instruments was not as important as heavy stomping and chanting. Clanging on heat pipes, thumping on plywood walls. Hollering into tape recorders. Slipping and swaying into alleyways and juke joints of yesteryear. Dreaming the American dust bowl and British maritime. On the restaurants roof the sound and feeling was cultivated and burned, built and hallowed out, painted and stripped to the primer. Cold War Kids make songs about human experience in orchards and hotel rooms, laundromats and churches, sea ports and school halls. Using songs of Dylan, Billie Holiday, and the Velvet Underground as a road map, they strive to manipulate, structure, and style their music with honesty”.

And Allmusic writes: “Their evocative, oddly soulful vignettes contain shades of Spoon’s sardonic, piano-driven rock; the insistent, jittery feel of One Time Bells-era French Kicks; the poetic, rumpled ramblings of the Walkmen; the stripped-down bluesiness of the White Stripes; and in their more theatrical moments, a ghostly trace of Jeff Buckley, as well as touches of folk and gospel. That’s not to say that Cold War Kids are derivative — it’s more like they take inspiration in classic sounds (indie or otherwise) and tweak them to their own designs. And even if there’s more comforting, built-in familiarity with a touch of freshness in their music than radical originality, there’s something to be said for familiarity, especially when it’s done this well. For fans of the band’s EPs, Robbers & Cowards will sound familiar for another reason: it takes most of its songs from Up in Rags and With Our Wallets Full, giving them a slightly fuller, cleaner sound. Fortunately, this only enhances the band’s most distinctive assets: Nathan Willett’s high-pitched, nasal, vibrato-heavy voice, a love it or hate it instrument that gives Cold War Kids a huge part of their character, and their way with storytelling and lyrics with a bookish eye and ear for detail. “We Used to Vacation,” a dry-eyed account of alcoholism’s effect on a family, and “Passing the Hat,” a tale of stealing from the collection plate at church that sounds like it could be from an indie rock musical about the Great Depression, combine both to great effect, but it’s the genuine warmth in “Hospital Beds” that makes it the finest moment on an exciting, accomplished debut album.”

The following video clip contains three song samples (’We Used To Vacation’, ‘Hang Me Up To Dry’ and ‘Hospital Beds’); it’s a collage of impressions from their travels as a band and meant to be their own intro to their music (which to my mind is a bit more varied than the three songs suggest - for examples ‘Saint John’ or ‘Robbers’ are quite different). By the way: their current website content gives a much better visual insight into their tour travels … great collection of b&w photos (click on home page photo).

Just some additional thoughts to my earlier post on Antisemitism:

There is a core to the Middle-East conflict which has roots reaching back deep in time. One of them is the belief of many Jews that Israel is their god-given homeland. Since at least the turn of the first millennium, Jews (esp from Europe) emigrated in countless waves to an area that included today’s Israel - to settle in what was already settled: by Arabs. That in turn (understandably) led to conflicts, often of a violent nature. Large waves of emigration began some 900 years later, in the 1880s, swelling the Jewish population to more than 1/2 million by the end of WWII. During that time Arabs of course fought back but Jews also strengthened their claims to the land they occupied.

While it is of course understandable that Jews fled from persecution in their former, especially European homelands, many of them went to what became Palestine - based on their belief that this was their true home. And they took possession of land through many means (see for example the map above, showing the reduction of Arab Palestine territory from 1946 to 200), causing hatred amongst those who originally lived on that land. The biggest coup certainly was the declaration of independence and the proclamation of the State of Israel in 1947/1948, which went hand in hand with large scale ethnic cleansing (driving Palestinians of their land), and which was the final chapter of the terror campaign by Irgun.

Irgun, also called Etzel (see emblem on the left) was a clandestine militant Zionist group that operated in Palestine from 1931 to 1948. Its members fought the British under the leadership of Menachem Begin (who later became prime minister of Israel); their activities included attacks on prominent symbols of the British administration, including the British military, police, and civil headquarters at the King David Hotel on July 22, 1946. Irgun was described as “terrorist” in a 1948 letter to the editor of the New York Times signed by Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Sidney Hook and several other prominent Jews condemning a visit to the United States by Menachem Begin in 1948 after he had become leader of the new Herut party.

The King David Hotel bombing shows the hypocrisy of Israel’s condemnation of bomb attacks on its own citizens. Bombs were used regularly by Irgun to achieve its goal of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. This attack happened on July 22, 1946. Members of the Irgun, dressed as Arabs (!), set off a bomb in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which had been the base for the British Secretariat, the military command and a branch of the Criminal Investigation Division (police). Ninety-one people were killed, most of them staff of the secretariat and the hotel: 28 British, 41 Arab, 17 Jewish, and 5 other. Around 45 people were injured. The attack was initially ordered by Menachem Begin.

Menachem Begin and King David Hotel after the bombing

Conclusion: Despite large scale expulsions by the Romans in 132CE, and the former Jewish kingdom having been ruled for further hundreds of years by the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, Jews never gave up their belief that, what later became Palestine, is their god-given land. And they didn’t go about their business in gentle, inclusive ways - to the contrary. Arab resistance was always seen as unjustified (probably because, in Jewish eyes, they had no right to live on the land given to the Jews by their god). There is a line of blood and oppression going through Jewish Middle-Eastern existence, stretching back from at least 2000 years: from constant violent clashes with the Arab populations of Palestine to the King David Hotel bombing to the massacres by Israel’s army under Ariel Sharon in the 1982 Lebanon war to cluster bombs in the 2006 Lebanon war to Israel’s atomic arsenal. Strong-arm tactics, irrational rage and violent aggression seem to be part of Jewish self-understanding, at least in that region. Yet through powerful spin as well as intimate connections to Western powers (and probably the language of money) consecutive Israeli governments and pre-1948 Jewish organisations seem to have been able to successfully divert attention away from that history of aggression, focusing it instead on Palestinian Arabs. And I am not just talking about war and physical terror. There are also the land grabs, starting with the first immigrations and then stretching to the occupation of Arab land in the 1967 war and its integration into the State of Israel (including the expansion of Jewish settlements against UN resolutions) to today’s illegal acquisition of Arab land for the purpose of building a wall to separate Israel from Palestinian territory. In short: Palestinians and their ancestors have been subjected to a long history of dispossession, injustice, violence and misguided religious beliefs (including that of self-righteousness and religious superiority).

The complexities arising from a conflict that is thousands of years old do not allow for easy solutions. Nevertheless: small steps might contribute to the disentanglement of violence, counter-violence, ancient hardened attitudes and beliefs, fears, self-serving interests, etc. One such small step could come from considering to learn from countries like New Zealand, Canada or Australia. These nations too were created by the illegal annexation of land occupied by its original inhabitants. But like it is the Israel and Palestine today, I would not argue that these nations should be disbanded and the land be given back to the indigenous people - from the perspectives of everyone living there, including the descendants of the original conquest victims, this would be totally infeasible. What has happened though in those countries is that current and/or recent governments as well as organisation like churches have formally apologised to its indigenous people, signed peace treaties or otherwise acknowledged the wrongdoings of their forbearers. As a small step, could similar attitudes and actions, initiated by those Jewish people who are highly critical of Israel’s behaviour towards Palestinians, contribute significantly towards lasting peace? Could it add a highly symbolic value to the fight for social justice, plus could it give more credibility to the support given by more liberal Jews concerned about Palestinian suffering?

If that would be the case, pre-conditions though need to be fulfilled for acknowledging and apologising for the past. One certainly is a rejection of the idea that Jews have a god-given right to occupy the so-called holy land. It was that idea that has driven the many migration waves I mentioned briefly, it is still driving Israel’s current expansion policies and it is a very important justification for why Israel as a state exists. Other arguments also need to be critically reflected, e.g. does the suffering of Jews, especially under the Nazi terror regime, justify the expropriation of other people’s land? In my experience, there is a deep resistance in Jews right across the political spectrum to confront the issues that lead to the establishment of the State of Israel; statements by well-meaning people and activists like Starhawk seem to prove my point. “I was raised as an American Jew in the postwar period, when Israel was our great dream realized, our one compensation for the horrors of the Holocaust” does not at all reflect any self-critical introspection.