Friday, 31st of January, 2003

From the Independent UK, Robert Fisk writes with remarkable restraint (but no little passion).

Thursday, 30th of January, 2003

Saul Williams, Ninja Tune/Big Dada beat poet/rapper, is releasing an anti-war EP as soon as Ninja Tune can get it out there. Williams and the Ninjas feel so strongly about the issue that they have released the entire EP for download (128kbps mp3s but very nicely encoded) from their website. Download it here.

It's great stuff. The first track is a live recording of an impassioned "Pledge of Resistance", in which Williams intones "Not in our name…" – "no more transfusions of blood for oil", "not by our hearts will we allow whole peoples or countries to be deemed Evil". I can find Williams anywhere from brilliant (see "Twice the First Time", released on various releases including the Xen Cuts 3CD set) to bloody annoying (see the postmodernist gibberish in DJ Krust's "Coded Language"). Here he's great; stirring and poetic.
Next, "September 12th" is a driving rap version of the first track, with extra lyrics and a "No, not in my name, not in my life" refrain which should immediately become an anthem for the times.
The third track, "Bloodletting", drops the pace to request us to "give blood" over an almost Boards of Canada-like synth riff. When the beat comes in it's like DJ Shadow's dropped by for a jam. Fucking superb stuff. And more Old Testament lyrics that give pause for thought – although I need to give it a closer listen before I work out what it's saying.

And then, after a minute's pause come the remixes (all of the live "Pledge of Resistance"). Coldcut are first cab off the rank, turning it into a party piece not unlike the jaunty yet chilling "Atomic Moog". It's ok but nothing special.
DJ Goo, who I've never heard of, goes for a more straightforward hip-hop remix, with minimal sci-fi soundtrack samples and all. Not bad, and looping the cheering crowd is a great effect, but the track gets rather monotonous.
Last up is DJ Spooky, who goes for a rather nice 2step beat. Spooky manages to fit Williams' loose solo poem rather funkily on top of his beats. Somehow the "Lemme hear you make some noise!" samples and the like seem a bit inappropriate, but it's certainly funky and has a great bassline… The best of the remixes, but Williams' original tracks are the real highlights here.

All proceeds will go to Not In Our Name, a US activist group who are probably a good cause.

Chris Lawson, Melbourne doctor and science fiction author extraordinaire, has a couple of great entries in his Frankenstein Journal at the moment. Unfortunately since he codes it all by hand (nothing wrong with that!) there are no permalinks, so I have to just link to the front page. The ficticious interview about "Design Linguistics" (the next step after that creationist nonsense known as "Intelligent Design") is fun, but beneath it is a selection of US satire, much of it anti-war and anti-Bush… It's heartening to see he's not universally popular in the US, as one sometimes can get the feeling.

Monday, 27th of January, 2003

Terry Jones has another insightful and bitingly satirical piece in the Guardian Observer, this time on Shrub:
I'm losing patience with my neighbours, Mr Bush
Stumblings readers will no doubt remember last year's The audacious courage of Mr Blair.

Thanks to Chris

Well, the show that FourPlay has been in for the last week, Close Your Little Eyes (running at the Studio @ the Sydney Opera House for Sydney Festival) is over, as of Saturday night, so I have a little leetle more time on my hands now. I shall, very soon now, start updating. Plenty of music to review, not to mention reading! Hurrah.

I have also installed a weblog for Chris, merch-bitch boy to the stars, who has been mentioned here before but not had anything to link to. So in a couple of days, when he's got it up and running, I'll stick up a link (nothing to see yet, move right along!)

Sunday, 26th of January, 2003

Interesting. In a previous blog entry, I mentioned an article from Salon that was "Salon premium", and therefore not accessible for free. It turns out that one can access Salon premium articles if one is willing to first watch an advertisement. Access then remains for 18 hours, after which one needs to watch another ad I guess.
Given that I'm good at ignoring advertising (I fucking hate it!) I guess this is a reasonably price to pay, as long as one properly innoculates oneself against the rhetorical force of the advertising before going forward.

I strongly recommend flicking through the bloody ad (ironically an ad for a car company today), and then reading this article, as discussed in my previous post, on the Bush administration's war on the environment.
Thanks to acb for the link

This Sydney Morning Herald article outlines the Bush Administration's plans for Iraq. The main objective of "Shock and Awe" "was not just to disable Iraq's fighting capacity but to leave the population dispirited and unwilling to support Saddam's regime."
In case we lacked any evidence that the US is directly targeting the civilian population of Iraq, there we have it. A bunch of gung-ho simple-minded racist idiots, in charge of the planet. Oh joy! And in the sidelines, Saddam Hussein's son public declares that, "God-willing", the consequences will make 9/11 look like a picnic.
Do the US really believe that their "Shock and Awe" will have any effect other than stepping up the terrorist activity?

Actually, in some British publication (I wish I could remember which) recently I saw it referred to as "11/9", which I rather like. We in the rest of the English-speaking world would count it as that, so why not?

Monday, 20th of January, 2003

Chris sent this link to me – a chilling example of just what the Shrub is doing to the United States.

Friday, 17th of January, 2003

Just in case you wondered about my coherence, here is an interview with Cory Doctorow at the Creative Commons website which explaines the license under which Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom has been published as a freely-distributable file (in various formats).
Doctorow's editor at Tor Books is none other than Patrcick Nielsen Hayden, whose blog Electrolite was mentioned recently in these pages. It's quite something for a major publisher to allow the entire text of a book they're publishing to be made freely available… Go read the interview for a very interesting artist's perspective (you can read that either way) on the benefits of filesharing…