Archive for April, 2010

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Apathy & The American Revolution

[ Comments Off ]Posted on April 10, 2010 by admin in Politics

Saturday, April 10th, 2010

Sure. We need a revolution in America. A revolution in the way we think.

No, not that one. And no, not that new one that tries to ride on its coattails. I’m thinking of a different one. One that’s not necessarily driven by politics. I have to admit I was a little moved by the images from Boston.com’s “Big Picture” features this week that covered the massive protests in Thailand and Kyrgyzstan. Seeing civilians organized in large enough numbers to overwhelm security forces clad in high-tech riot gear immediately made me curious about two things. First of all, how did so many people get on the same page and take action? And second, what were they really protesting? The answer to the first question is still being analyzed by major news sources, but the uprisings had common motives. Most sources are citing government corruption, murky privatization schemes, oligarchical leadership, and financial hardship for the working class while elites flourish. Sound familiar? Why are we so complacent about similar things happening in America? I live in one of the states hardest-hit by the recent mini-econopocalypse. Things are so bad here in Michigan that the city of Flint is burning down while firefighters are being laid off. You may have heard of Flint because that’s where documentary filmmaker and rabble-rouser Michael Moore started his career, with Roger & Me. Or because it always seems to get a top ranking on things like the Forbes.com America’s Most Miserable Cities list. It’s getting so bad here in Michigan that one of the hottest new ideas in urban planning is bulldozing. And yet you’ll still have no trouble finding unemployed people whose homes have been repossessed rabidly defending the politicians of their red/blue preference that helped get them where they are, while the only folks that are really taking action are crazier than a soup sandwich. So while I joke about the need for revolution in America, part of me is dead serious. Although I don’t think a violent revolt is necessary, I really believe that a revolution in thinking is imperative. A book like Naomi Wolf’s The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot would have been perceived as absurd a decade ago, but now seems almost hackneyed to a reasonably informed person. Will we ever wake up and let go of our love of our political parties and realize that it’s more about regular working people vs an entitled and affluent ruling class wielding their control of a corporatocracy? I found it amusing that while googling “American complacency”, one of the more insightful things I found was this piece by a 19 year-old. They compare American apathy to the behavior of a sociopath, which they point out is defined as someone who is “interested only in their personal needs and desires, without concern for the effects of their behavior on others.” What do you think? Are we getting a little lazy here in the cradle of modern democracy? Read the rest of this entry »

Lend Hope A Hand – Volunteer With Amara Conservation

[ 2 Comments ]Posted on April 9, 2010 by admin in Clean & Green

Friday, April 9th, 2010

The Kenya/US/UK non-profit is entering their tenth year of education and conservation work and is looking for volunteers.

You know those stories our grandfathers tell us about walking barefoot 10 miles to school every day? Well there are still kids today who actually do that, and are smiling when they get there because they’re ecstatic to have the chance to better themselves with education. Since 2001, I’ve been lucky enough to work with a non-profit called Amara Conservation that supports education and conservation projects in Kenya that help both children and adults learn how conserving the wildlife of Kenya not only benefits the animals, but benefits the economic future of the country itself. Amara works on a variety of projects with organizations like the Kenya Wildlife Service, the African Environmental Film Foundation , and RadioActive UK. As well as ongoing community education with a mobile film projection unit since 2002, Amara’s key strategy is to identify achievable and self-sustaining programs, and then coordinate with other Kenya NGO’s and agencies to facilitate and fund them. We’re entering our 10th year this year, and so far have three fund-raising events in the works; two in Ann Arbor, MI, and one in the UK in June. The Ann Arbor events include our 10th annual fundraiser dinner at the Earle restaurant May 23, and a more casual night of music at a local club (acts and venue TBA). We’re always looking for volunteers, so if you have a passion for supporting wildlife or education programs and live in Ann Arbor or Chicago, contact us either through Dissociated Press or through Amara’s web site. If you’re not interested in volunteering and still want to help out, you can always make a donation via Amara’s web site. Read the rest of this entry »

A Chain Is Only As Strong As It’s Wikiest Link – US Military Video Of Civilian “Collateral Damage”

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on April 8, 2010 by admin in Politics

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

It’s been suggested that I look rather comfortable in a tin foil hat, but even the Icelandic government and Glenn Greenwald agree that sites like WikiLeaks.org and Cryptome.org may be the last hope for journalistic freedom


This is the point in the video (see
below) where a crew member says
“yeah, that’s a weapon”, referring
to the journalist’s camera.

The old expression “what you don’t know won’t hurt you” takes on a different meaning when “what you don’t know” is that there’s a trigger-happy American Apache helicopter crew waiting for permission to shoot at you with 30mm cannons and Hellfire missiles because they’ve somehow mistaken your camera for an AK-47 and an RPG. We joked last week that maybe the US military had set up the whistleblower site WikiLeaks as a brilliantly recursive disinformation exercise, but it would be hard to find the disinformation value in releasing a video that clearly shows that you lied publicly and boldly about your role in killing innocent civilians in an urban combat area. If you’re an American, and if you still think we have any kind of credible news media or that our government exercises anything remotely like transparency, I urge you to read Glenn Greenwald’s The war on WikiLeaks and why it matters. In it, he points out that “at exactly the same time that investigative journalism has collapsed, public and private efforts to manipulate public opinion have proliferated“. Which is a fact that, in my opinion, effectively counterbalances any criticism of what the site does, because so far, the site’s developers have only shown alignment with one principle that could be considered political: exposing secret and deceitful programs perpetrated by governments and large organizations. WikiLeaks is getting a lot of support from the Icelandic government to create a “journalism haven”, and God knows journalists need one. Over 800 journalists have been killed on the job since 1992. So why is Iceland behind the idea? The Icelandic Modern Media Initiative explains – among other things – that it was failure of the free press in Iceland that allowed the massive government and banking corruption that brought the country to complete economic collapse. Sound like a familiar setup? I’m sometimes accused of looking rather comfortable in a tinfoil hat, but this isn’t “internet crank” material, this may be the first ripple in a new wave of journalistic integrity. Watch the videos below, if you have the stomach for it. Be warned though, you will see innocent civilians like yourself getting killed. Read the rest of this entry »

Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat – Innovative? No. Noteworthy? Yes.

[ Comments Off ]Posted on April 7, 2010 by admin in Music

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

Charanjit Singh’s 1982 release Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat has made quite a splash in the hipper music press, but my band’s manager in 1982 always threatened to pull the plug when we played stuff like this.

For many who consider themselves sophisticated listeners, the words “synthesizing” and “disco beat” in an album title would pretty much wrap it up in terms of whether or not they’d listen to it. And if they weren’t into Indian music, throwing the word “raga” in there would seal the deal for good. Which would be too bad in the case of Charanjit Singh’s 1982 release Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat. It’s worth a listen. Although I wouldn’t give the raves a lot of pop media blogs are giving it and say it’s history-dismantling or absolutely shock and awe inducing or that Charanjit Singh accidentally invented house music. No, to me the recording is remarkable for other reasons, primary amongst them being the fact that it exists at all. Partly because it’s electronic, partly because it was from an Indian artist in 1982, but mainly because someone took the time to record it so well, and that there was still a master to work with decades later. Although fans of acid and other techno-inspired club music would strangle me for saying this, the music on this record is remarkably unremarkable not because it’s bad in any way, but to be blunt, whenever my band’s manager in 1982 caught us pursuing this kind of repetitious multicultural noodling with our Roland synth and drum machine, he threatened to pull funding. And you could often hear music much like this coming through the studio walls when musicians of the era were stoned and jamming. You never would have thought at the time to record the stuff, and if you did, you probably would have done so on some crappy 4-track portastudio. It took a generation of drugs and clubbing for dance music to evolve to the point where this kind of machine-driven droning was actually perceived as music. I jest a little, but I’m partly serious. Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat is definitely worth a listen simply because it’s worth a listen. In terms of being ahead of its time though? It’s probably more worthy of note because of the fact that the recording made it to tape and lasted long enough for a re-release almost 30 years later than because it was prescient or eerily visionary. I’m just gonna go see if I can find those portastudio tapes now. I may have found an aftermarket for my post-punk era rejected demos . Read the rest of this entry »

Red Letter Media – Brilliant, Hilarious, and… Annoying?

[ Comments Off ]Posted on April 6, 2010 by admin in Popular Media

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

It would just be silly for us to review a preview of a review of a movie, so we’ll let you decide for yourself what to think about YouTube celebrity critic Red Letter Media.

What’s one half brilliant comedy, one half insightful critical analysis, and one half annoying? The movie reviews by Red Letter Media, that’s what. Yeah, I know that’s three halves, but the math just feels right. I’ve never been a big fan of critics and movie reviews; there’s something intrinsically annoying about someone who doesn’t know how to do something sitting around telling you how someone who does didn’t do it right. We’ve mentioned the “meta” nature of recent pop media before, and this is where the Red Letter Media reviews of films like Star Wars: The Phantom Menace shine. If you haven’t seen them before, the reviews are a strange mix of childish complaints mixed with brilliant insights, delivered with a simple-minded but self-aware lowbrow humor. All read in a contrived voice that sounds like a cross between Strong Bad and Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs . The reviews are sometimes almost as long as the movies they’re skewering, and sometimes worth the marathon, sometimes not. It would just be too meta even for my tastes to review a review of a movie, so I’ll let you decide for yourself. So who’s behind this madness? Surprisingly, it’s not some tormented nerd with a video camera like CopperCab, it’s an indy film actor/director/writer named Mike Stoklasa, who apparently collaborates with fellow indy filmmaker Jay Bauman. Read an interview Stoklasa here, and explore the reviews on Red Letter Media’s YouTube channel. Read the rest of this entry »

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