Sunday, January 23, 2011

TEN GEMS 2010: Part 2


Classic collabo 2010! Jadakiss goes innnn verse 1 and 3... that's expected. (Props to the legend!). But, 50 Cent in rare form (I'm talkin Power of the Dollar rare)... is a dope surprise. Beat bangss.. Bump Dump! :)

"Yea shorty wild, trey pounds, 40 cals, at the dice game, brand new 100s, 40 thou.. stay fly, work out, all he eat is halal, never catch him dirty cuz all he keep is a smile... When they caught him wit a gat in the car he beat it in trial, he don't say too much - never eager to style.. Remind me of Gotti, shyne with the shotty, lawyer so good - he paid a fine for a body. Heroin in B-more, crib by the sea-shore, car service to the G4, Fila velour..." - Jadakiss




04. "REP REP" - Illuminati X

Originally released on the "Capish Hip Hop Vol.1: Unsigned City" compilation of Niagara area hip hop, this freestyle got the "nickname" RIP Guru because of ONE Luxe line. In reality, the subject of the song is very generic, and the Guru reference is just a quick, slick tribute 2 a Hip-Hop legend. I added the few extra words to the outro to make the song relevant to the project it's on, and also the 'sub-theme' it's now dealing with.. We shot a video late last year too...behind the scenes and final cut coming soon!

"Uh huh fuck da cliches, save ya breath for a prayer we in peak shape, it's the uncrowned kings of the beat break, pop shit around now ya fucked like Khalid Sheikh.. Bring it back, trigger finger rap, put 'em up high 'cuz the sky where we at.. so high ask Guru - when he comin back? and we can go and wild out just 2 get a rep, and we can drive to Big Bee just 2 get a wrap, n we can call ya bitch up - just 2 get it bapped" - Luxe





AZ is my favorite rapper. He's also in my opinion the best rapper of all time when it comes to skill, consistency, album catalogue and amount of classic verses. He's no nicer in 2010 than he was in 2001, or say 1997. He's always the nicest. Period. "Feel My Pain" explains that as much as any AZ song. But no more. Or less.... U followin? ... Nicest.

"Reminsce, venemous, this is limitless, started from the Genesis, schooled on what business is.. touchdown scrimmages, targetin your nemesis, bargainin your innocence, findin out your friends-ain't-shit.. let me finish it, few niggas benefit, new niggas tend to sit or sent to the penitent. Cam style, I know now what Killa meant, no resemblance, movin off my inner strength, superb penmanship, heard that my pen was sick..." - AZ






"May I continue? I run up in you, bitches every venue like "shit, what's on the menu?". N they expen you, en you for the revenue, en you for these ends, en up laying on the avenue. All for the markets, a buck in a pocket, son they murder prophets, and profits skyrocket.. shhh, they hear us talkin, you know they watchin.. we marked from the start and the marksmen are hawkin.. If snipers on the roof knew they silencin the truth, would they disregard the order, be defiant, or still shoot?.. So much mileage on these boots, but we march on... Never silencing the truth, son we march strong, our song - the Red Brigade, we regulate the blockade, Illuminate from Bombay to Zimbabwe... the Third World do it live fuck Live Aid... Long as you and I, we do or die, so fire away... Balkan Beast Zapatista, the beasts hear to feast on the street and defeat he don't speak of, so what's your recourse? Homie I got heat for, ones like you, like the Sun high noon" - Luxe




01. "LEADERS" - Nas & Damian Marley

Nas is number 2 on my favorite/greatest emcee of all time list. With that said, I have a fucked up tendency to overhype myself up every time a new Nas album is coming out. I expect so unbeliavably much out of it, that in reality - no matter what the album ends up like, at first listen it's "not great enough"... When I first bought Distant Relatives, and first took it in, I was sincerely disapointed.. Between the first listen impact and the choice of flags on the inside of the cd-case, I gave the project the worst rating of any Nas release... ever. I listened to the "teaser version" of As We Enter a billion times. I listened to Strong Will Continue a billion more. I refused to download the leaks of any other songs. I was at the Sunrise in St. Catharines first thing on release day.. I rolled a perfect blunt. I took in the album... And I put it away.. I think I might have called it "weak" at a barbershop once... I was disapointed for real!

Then, about half a year later, I picked it up off the shelf, and gave it one more listen. Only this time I had no unreasonable expectations, no particular sounds I was looking for, or Nas flow nostalgias... I just listened.

What a smart thing to do.

Another few months down the road, and I can sincerely say I rate Distant Relatives among the best Nas albums ever. Every song is hot. Every verse is a quotable. And the fucked up thing is, in my opinion Damian outshines Nas on most of the album. Song after song are full of gems. Life lessons. Subject matter ranges from politics, to friendships, to war to spirituality to personal opinions... Everything is there. I just didn't see it the first time.

I suggest to anyone thinking of actually BUYING a new album to buy Distant Relatives. It's a classic. It will be widely recognized as that in the future.

Friday, January 21, 2011

INFAMOUS INTERVIEW: Tom Morello - RT.com

NEWS: Madeleine Albright made millions in Kosovo

focus-fen.net

Belgrade. Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has made millions in Kosovo, Serbian Vecernje Novosti daily writes.

“The commitment of the former leader of the U.S. diplomacy to the Albanians’ side has paid off in recent days. Albright’s company (The Albright Group) has made EUR 20 million from the sale of the Kosovar mobile operator,” the Serbian newspaper comments, adding this happened with cunning financial and political moves.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

BOOK CLUB: Bruce Lee's Private Library





NOTE: "Magic Power of Emotions", "Think And Grow Rich", "The Master-Key to Riches", "Philosophy of the Unconscious".

Fat shoutout to MYCOMEUP !

NEW MIXTAPE: "David Dreams" by Stress


New release from Serbian artist Stress. 13 bangers. Few features, including yours truly. Bump "Rep Serbia RMX" HERE. DOWNLOAD MIXTAPE HERE.

INSPIRING: Mike Tyson (Boxing)







EASY READ: "Overcoming Setbacks"


BY: Michael Bucci


In business, as in life, we are often taken aback by unexpected events. Sometimes these events are beneficial and help us achieve our goals. However, more often than not, we face challenges that have the potential to permanently derail us from making our dreams come true.

A setback can take any form and come at any time. It may be a large client who takes his business elsewhere or your wife filing for divorce. It may be a natural disaster that is out of your control or the corporation laying off people to cut costs.


Control your reactions

No matter what the setback, there is one thing that you can control at all times: your reaction. That's right: If you are having a bad day at the office, there is no need to be a sourpuss and make life miserable for everyone around you. Suck it up and carry on as if all were well.

Whatever the problem may be, you will need to address it quickly and come up with a solution. The best way to do this is by remaining calm and levelheaded. Emotion will cloud your judgment, so keep it in check, or a small problem can quickly escalate into a big one.


Temporary failure

For most people, especially ambitious and competitive ones, setbacks are not always easy to swallow. By our very nature, we do not like to fail. The first time you rode a bike, you probably fell off after five seconds. Did you just quit and go back to sucking your thumb? Of course not. You got back on that thing and tried until you could ride it around the block!

Do you still handle failure in the same gung ho manner today? Suppose you were up for a promotion and did not get it because the boss thought that schmuck from finance was a better pick. Would you sulk and be grouchy for the next three months? Would you have a big chip on your shoulder and start slacking off on the job? If so, that may be why the boss picked the other guy instead of you.

The first thing you need to keep in mind if you fail at something is that failure is nothing more than a temporary setback. Upon seeing failure in this light, you will come to realize that failure is not so bad after all, provided you keep trying until you get it right.


Tomorrow is a new day

Now that you know that failure is nothing more than a temporary setback, here's another great way to quickly get back on track. Always keep in mind that tomorrow is a new day. If we have a rough day and fail at something, it isn't easy to keep our game face on and keep working through the day at full capacity. This is normal.

However, what separates the truly successful from everyone else is that they take their medicine, absorb the pain for that one day, and then come back re-energized and ready for full-out war the next day. They do not let the previous day's defeat hold them back from achieving their goals. They do not complain or sulk, because that would only waste more time -- time they could be using to make money.


Don't dwell on the past

Successful people are able to rise above the fray because they focus on the task at hand and on how they can improve themselves. They learn from their past mistakes; they do not dwell on them. What's done is done and cannot be changed. Successful people know this and don't waste time or energy beating a dead horse.

The past is useful if you use it as a lifeline. That is, use it to learn from, and don't repeat past mistakes. This alone will make you a better person. Avoid using the past as an anchor; it will weigh you down and hold you back. Don't keep your entire past in active memory, because it will keep you docked for life, and if you don't get out to sea, then you won't catch any fish.

If your mind is busy going over past decisions and actions all the time, it does not have time to work on current problems and future plans. Without planning, no one can be a success.


Clear mind, clean execution

If you miss the game-winning shot one day, you must come to terms with it quickly and move on. If you do this, you'll have a clear mind and will perform better. If you want to hit a home run, you must go to bat with the same mind-set you had the last time you hit a home run.

If you step up to the plate thinking about how you struck out the last two times at bat, then you'll likely add another strikeout to your box score for the night. Leave the last at-bat in the past where it belongs; focus on hitting the ball.


Be a duck

Ducks are graceful creatures. When you see ducks swimming in a pond, they look as if they are floating along quietly, not moving a muscle. However, if you look underwater, you'll discover that they are "paddling" furiously in order to move forward.

The point is that you must also be able to look serene and keep your game face on, even if your mind is racing along at 1,000 mph and your heart rate is only slightly slower. Take failure in stride by dusting yourself off, getting back up after a short breather and starting the battle anew the next day. Every day is a new day -- a potentially great new day.

MLK DAY: Martin Luther King Jr. on War



CLASSIC DOCUMENTARY: Tragedy - The Story of Queensbridge




| PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7 |

Saturday, January 15, 2011

NBA: The Confessions of an NBA Scorekeeper


From: Deadspin.com

As Alex remembers it now, Olajuwon had a double-double with nine blocks at some point during the fourth quarter. "Someone in management came to me and said, basically, Thou shalt give Hakeem Olajuwon a triple-double. Come hell or high water, he's getting a triple-double. I'm like, uh, OK." The Grizzlies had small monitors on which they kept a running box score. Anyone could see if someone was closing in on a milestone. "If a guy is in vicinity of a record, people are tracking those things. I know those things," Alex says. "If a guy has an eight-game streak of getting 10 rebounds, I'll know that. Am I gonna help that? Probably." The Rockets game, though, "was the one time someone said, 'You'll do this.' And I did." (For the record, Alex is reasonably certain that the 10th block was legitimate. "If he got a bullshit block," he says, "it probably happened before the 10th one.")

He won't say who issued the commandment, other than that it was someone in basketball operations who helped compile statistical packets for the media. "It was a mid-level guy, not a GM or an assistant GM," he says. Alex believes the suit was acting on his own initiative, though the habit of fudging statistics upward was practically an organizational, if not leaguewide, imperative. "When you get a triple-double, that dramatically increases the potential of our game being shown on ESPN. 'Here are some highlights of Olajuwon, and oh, by the way, they happen to be in Vancouver.' A team like ours was getting zero national media coverage. There's some value in that, even if someone is lighting us up, for marketing and longterm growth."

Alex was new to the game, however, and the request pissed him off. "I was immature," he says, "I was 20-21 years old, and some dude was telling me I needed to do something."

Which is perhaps why, a little more than a year later, with Nick Van Exel and the Lakers in town, Alex decided to act out. "I was sort of disgruntled," he says. "I loved the game. I don't want the numbers to be meaningless, and I felt they were becoming meaningless because of how stats were kept. So I decided, I'm gonna do this totally immature thing and see what happens. It was childish. The Lakers are in town. We're gonna lose. Fuck it. He's getting a shitload of assists." If you were to watch the game today, you'd see some "comically bad assists." Alex's fingerprints are all over the box score. He gave Van Exel everything. "Van Exel would pass from the top of the three-point line to someone on the wing who'd hold the ball for five seconds, dribble, then make a move to the basket. Assist, Van Exel."

No one noticed. From his chair, Alex could hear the legendary broadcaster Chick Hearn calling the game. Van Exel's having a great game! He's moving the ball exceptionally well! And in the next day's writeups, Van Exel was of course the hero. Alex thought, What the fuck?

"This is a bad analogy, but it's like a husband cheating on a wife in such a way as to guarantee he's going to be caught," Alex says. "There's nothing to justify it. It was stupid. And there were no consequences." He figured he'd at least get scolded. He wasn't. In fact, a management guy congratulated him. The game was sure to get on SportsCenter now. FULL STORY

INSPIRING: Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff - From Guerrilla Fighter to "the Most Powerful Woman in the World"


Dilma Rousseff is the 36th and current President of Brazil. She is the first woman ever to hold the office. Prior to that, in 2005, she also was the first woman to become Chief of Staff of Brazil, appointed by then President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Daughter of a Bulgarian immigrant and a schoolteacher, Rousseff was raised in an upper middle class household in Belo Horizonte. She became a socialist during her youth, and following the 1964 coup d'état joined various left-wing and Marxist urban guerrilla groups that fought against the military dictatorship. Rousseff was captured and jailed between 1970 and 1972 and reportedly tortured. FULL BIO



Thursday, January 13, 2011

CLASSIC DOCUMENTARY: Antifa - Skinhead Hunters (2008)

(French: Antifa - Chasseurs de Skins)

A French documentary on how groups of youth in Paris generated a backlash against the NeoNazi skinhead subculture, and by doing so earned themselves the nickname Chasseurs de Skins or 'Skinhead Hunters'.




| PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7 |

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

DOPE VERSE: Prodigy - "I Shot Ya (Remix)"

MURDA MUZIK



I conversate wit many men, it's time to begin again
Forgot what I already knew, aiyyo you hear me friend?
Illuminati want my mind, soul, and my body
Secret society, tryin to keep they eye on me
But I'm stay incogni', in places they can't find me
Make my moves strategically, the G.O.D.
It's sorta similar but iller than a chess player
I use my thinker, it coincides with my blinker
While you wondered what we sayin on the records real
Yeah you motherfuckin right kid you know the deal
My Mobb is Infamous just like the fuckin title read
You get back slapped so hard make ya nose bleed
Some ---- kids feeling guilty bout the ----
But you first baby girl so just face it
But anyway, back on the real side of things
My niggaz sling cracks and wear fat diamond rings
Not only is it inside the songs that we sing kid
Everything is real not just a song that we sing
From my life to the paper, very accurately
Give you all of my two so maybe you can three
Prodigy will forever will S-H-I-N-E
My shit attract millions like the moon attract the sea
How dare you ever in your life walk past me
Without acknowledgin this man as G-O-D

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

TALK: Andrej Grubačić - Wobblies and Zapatistas




PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7 | PART 8 | PART 9

NEWS: US Drones Kill 938 Pakistanis in 2010

FROM: GLOBALRESEARCH.CA



The US has stepped up its drone attacks in Pakistan's tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, a new report by a Pakistani Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) says.

The Islamabad-based NGO, Conflict Monitoring Center, revealed the details of the deaths by US drone attacks in its annual report.

The report gives detailed accounts on how the CIA killed innocent people merely on the suspicion of being militants.

In 2010, the CIA carried out an unprecedented 132 drone attacks in tribal areas, claiming the lives of 938 people, it said.

The Conflict Monitoring Center points out that none of the media organizations throughout last year reported on body counts from independent sources.

Many analysts believe the geo-strategic game plan of the US has turned out to be counterproductive.

The year 2010 was one of the deadliest years for civilians living in the tribal regions, as the number of drone strikes exceeded the combined number of such attacks carried out from 2004 to 2009.

The report states that 2,052 people lost their lives in drone strikes during the 5-year period between 2004 and 2009. The rising civilian causalities have left behind many tragic stories in the tribal areas.

The reaction of Pakistani people against the frequent use of drone strikes is finally gathering momentum.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

INTERESTING: "Cat Spies and Adrenaline Gerbils: The 8 Strangest Government Animal Programs in History"

A vulture carrying an Israeli university's GPS device is being detained by Saudi Arabian authorities after landing in the town of Hyaal last week. The bird is being accused of spying. This comes on the heels of an Egyptian authority speculating that Israel had put bloodthirsty sharks off the coast of Egypt in order to hurt tourism. "What is being said about the Mossad throwing the deadly shark [in the sea] to hit tourism in Egypt is not out of the question," a South Sinai governor said, "but it needs time to confirm." As it has in the case of the vulture, Israel called the shark charges "ludicrous."

Still, it may not be so unreasonable for governments to suspect these animals aren't totally innocent. Without many people's knowledge, nations have been making spies, telephones, and weapons out of beasts big and small for decades. These are some of the more interesting known examples.


#8: War Pigeons

American, British, and French forces each used homing pigeons extensively throughout both World Wars, mostly by training them to deliver secret messages on the battlefield. The pigeons proved so successful and undetectable, in fact, that the U.S. Army even founded a pigeon breeding and training center in New Jersey that remained open from 1917 to 1957. Before it ended, one scientist had attempted to create a pigeon-guided missile system, aptly titled "Project Pigeon."

In England, at the close of World War II, 32 war pigeons were awarded Dickin Medals, the highest decoration of valor a war animal can receive in the United Kingdom.


#7: Anti-Tank Dogs

The Russians began training anti-tank dogs as early as the 1930s, just in time for the four-legged soldiers to become bombs under advancing German tanks in World War II:

...trainers would starve the dogs, then train them to find food under a tank. The dogs quickly learned that being released from their pens meant to run out to where the training tank was parked and find some vittles. Once trained, the dogs would be fitted with a bomb attached to the back, and loosed into a field of oncoming German Panzers.

Not only was this tactic inhumane, it was problematic for a number of reasons, one of which was that German soldiers started executing dogs on the battlefield on sight. Other dogs would run scared from gunfire and hide out in Russian encampments, endangering the good guys.

Due to its unpredictability, the dog as bomb trend eventually died out, but not before Japanese forces and Iraqi insurgents had tried it out themselves.


#6: Adrenaline Gerbils

Research on behalf of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the 1970s discovered that gerbils could be trained to smell an increase in adrenaline in people's sweat. The Israelis, who are always looking for smarter ways to catch terrorists, took the Canadian study and used it to formulate gerbil checkpoints in their Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. Fans wafted the scent of suspects' hands toward the gerbils, who would then press a lever if they noticed heightened adrenaline.

The British Security Service, also known as MI5, almost established a gerbil force of their own for interrogations, but the Israelis scrapped their gerbil checkpoints when it was discovered that the animals couldn't distinguish between terrorists and people who were just afraid of flying.


THE 5 STRANGEST GOVERNMENT ANIMAL PROGRAMS IN HISTORY HERE

LEGEND: Charles Oakley


"Charles Oakley, when he was the Raptors starting forward, was suspended for one game for throwing a ball at the head of Tyrone Hill, then a Philadelphia 76ers forward, this after he was ejected from a pre-season game for slapping Hill. The source of their acrimony was the spoils of an off-season dice game that totalled about $54,000 (all figures U.S.). When Hill paid back Oakley, Oakley told reporters that Hill still owed interest to the tune of another $54,000.

It’s possible, in that case and the more recent ones, that gambling wasn’t the root of the problem. Oakley was also the guy who interrupted a morning shootaround in 2000 to punch L.A. Clippers guard Jeff McInnis — not over money, but, as legend has it, over a woman"

FULL BIO





Saturday, January 8, 2011

DOE OR DIE 2: AZ - MONTREALITY (Interview)


SPEECH: Zack De La Rocha @ Coachella





"A good friend of ours said that if the same laws were applied to U.S. Presidents as were applied to the Nazis after World War II that every single one of them, every last rich white one of them, from Truman on would've been hung to death and shot. And this current administration is no exception. They should be hung and tried and shot...as any war criminal should be. But the challenges that we face, they go way beyond administrations, way beyond elections, way beyond every four years of pulling levers, way beyond that, because this whole rotten system has become so vicious and cruel that in order to sustain itself it needs to destroy entire countries and profit from their reconstruction in order to survive. And that's not a system that changes every 4 years, it's a system that we have to break down generation after generation after generation..."

Friday, January 7, 2011

NEWS: Investigation into death of Notorious B.I.G. heats up


Los Angeles (CNN) -- A task force made up of local and federal law enforcement agencies is actively pursuing leads into the 1997 slaying of hip hop artist Christopher Wallace, better known as Biggie Smalls or Notorious B.I.G., according to two sources familiar with the investigation.

According to one law enforcement source, the investigation into the 13-year-old unsolved case was "reinvigorated" months ago as a result of new information, but the source would not elaborate further because of the ongoing investigation that includes the Los Angeles Police Department, L.A. County District Attorney's Office and the FBI.

FULL STORY

Thursday, January 6, 2011

TEN GEMS 2010: Part 1

10. "CROSS SEAS BELGRADE REMIX" - Illuminati X feat. VIP

In June 2010, we brought VIP (Serbian Hip Hop duo) overseas for a IX Million Entertainment sponsored concert at The Bank Lounge in Niagara Falls, Canada. I'm very proud of this event because it's the first time in Serbian Hip Hop history that a domestic artist performed in North America. We recorded Cross Seas Remix at Kreem's crib and the session, like the concert and the days surrounding it, was a blast! VIP is cool as fuck. Everyone went to NUNU's crib (IX Million barber!!! lol) for a cut! One half of VIP smoked more Canadian kush than me!! haha.. I have video footage of the whole weekend including the show. It will be edited and on 2MC1DJ.com before end of the year! Anyway, in my humble opinion, this song is a timeless classic. If you speak Serbian, take it in word for word; if you don't, take it for what it is: international hip-hop at its finest.. Bump!







09. "THE OATH" - CNN feat. Raekwon & Busta Rhymes

Classic posse cut from one of my favorite groups of all time, featuring Bussa Buss and one of my favorite artists of all time. The theme of the song is a Oath, or "a swear in" each of the artists is taking to "the family". One by one they are sworn in in four languages, Spanish, Italian, Swahili and Patois! Verses are flawless. Beat bangs. The War Report 2 is the best album of 2010. Bump!

"I riot wit da devil, walk righteous, canarys in da bezel, death before dishonour money over bitches i'm my brother's keeper, i throw da world in da sleeper, im so eager 2 blast, bilingual - i be speakin in Cash" - Capone







08. "WEDNESDAY" - Saukrates

2010 edition Saukrates. One of the best out. Canadian legend. Nuff said.

"... I wonder why, wack mothafuckas multiply, must be 85 - percenters, i live n let die, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, i'm sendin em bottles of AK47s full of vodka, i'ma rock n roll opera, hip hopa, n cut from a cloth of Bob Marley poppa, i'm off 2 The Bank.." - Saukrates







07. "NO AVERAGE JOE" - Sauce Money

Sauce mothafucka 2010

"Jean Paul Gaultier cologne wat u smell wen I rome, foreel n i dont give a damn about a throne... cuz on da foshizzle, if i wanted, kings I unseat em n reigns become a slight drizzle.. yall can put ya umbrellas up, the Sun is out, ask if Sauce back - tell em yup. Dead em yup, u shoulda did it n never let em up, try 2 make em forget it, set em n wet em up" - Sauce Money







06. "I'M GONE" - Fat Joe

DJ Premier on the beat and hook. I prolly bumped this shit more than any song in 2010. Timeless. Classic.

"We was at the Grammys with mothafuckin four fifths at our waist nigga..." - Fat Joe






"TEN GEMS 2010" PART 2 - COMING SOON - TOP 5 GEMS OF THE YEAR"

BOOK CLUB: The Coming Insurrection


By: The Invisible Committee

"I AM WHAT I AM. This is marketing’s latest offering to the world, the final stage in the development of advertising, far beyond all the exhortations to be different, to be oneself and drink Pepsi. Decades of concepts in order to get where we are, to arrive at pure tautology. I = I. He’s running on a treadmill in front of the mirror in his gym. She’s coming back from work, behind the wheel of her Smart car. Will they meet?

I AM WHAT I AM. My body belongs to me. I am me, you are you, and something’s wrong. Mass personalization. Individualization of all conditions – life, work and misery. Diffuse schizophrenia. Rampant depression. Atomization into fine paranoiac particles. Hysterization of contact. The more I want to be me, the more I feel an emptiness. The more I express myself, the more I am drained. The more I run after myself, the more tired I get. We cling to our self like a coveted job title. We’ve become our own representatives in a strange commerce, guarantors of a personalization that feels, in the end, a lot more like an amputation. We insure our selves to the point of bankruptcy, with a more or less disguised clumsiness.

Meanwhile, I manage. The quest for a self, my blog, my apartment, the latest fashionable crap, relationship dramas, who’s fucking who… whatever prosthesis it takes to hold onto an “I”! If “society” hadn’t become such a definitive abstraction, then it would denote all the existential crutches that allow me to keep dragging on, the ensemble of dependencies I’ve contracted as the price of my identity."


"Today the West is the GI who dashes into Fallujah on an M1 Abrams tank, listening to heavy metal at top volume. It’s the tourist lost on the Mongolian plains, mocked by all, who clutches his credit card as his only lifeline. It’s the CEO who swears by the game Go. It’s the young girl who chases happiness in clothes, guys, and moisturizing creams. It’s the Swiss human rights activist who travels to the four corners of the earth to show solidarity with all the world’s rebels – provided they’ve been defeated. It’s the Spaniard who couldn’t care less about political freedom once he’s been granted sexual freedom. It’s the art lover who wants us to be awestruck before the “modern genius” of a century of artists, from surrealism to Viennese actionism, all competing to see who could best spit in the face of civilization. It’s the cyberneticist who’s found a realistic theory of consciousness in Buddhism and the quantum physicist who’s hoping that dabbling in Hindu metaphysics will inspire new scientific discoveries.

The West is a civilization that has survived all the prophecies of its collapse with a singular stratagem. Just as the bourgeoisie had to deny itself as a class in order to permit the bourgeoisification of society as a whole, from the worker to the baron; just as capital had to sacrifice itself as a wage relation in order to impose itself as a social relation – becoming cultural capital and health capital in addition to finance capital; just as Christianity had to sacrifice itself as a religion in order to survive as an affective structure – as a vague injunction to humility, compassion, and weakness; so the West has sacrificed itself as a particular civilization in order to impose itself as a universal culture."

DOWNLOAD THE PRINTABLE VERSION

CLASSIC DOCUMENTARY: The Corporation (2003)



Wednesday, January 5, 2011

INSPIRING: Sen. Bernie Sanders

Leftist U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders gives an 8 HOUR speech in the Senate in order to delay the passage of a bill that would extend tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans while increasing taxes for the poorest.



ARTICLE: Prison Survival Guide


FROM: LIBCOM.ORG

Imprisonment as a form of punishment can be traced back to Greek times, but until relatively recently long-term incarceration was extremely rare, only flourishing in modern times after transportation to 'the colonies' became unviable (in no small part due to the American Revolution).

Traditionally, those that offended against society were punished publicly, generally in the most brutal way, from the stocks to the gibbet. Public executions, often with attendant torture and/or mutilation, were the norm in this country until the 17th century. Even when they were abolished it was not out of any sense of decency or humanity, but according to the Oxford History of the Prison, because they had "become the occasion of rowdiness and disgust - both because the crowd had begun to identify with the victim, not the executioner, and because the spectacle had become revolting, offending a new sensibility about pain and bodily integrity. Thus, it became desirable to mete out punishment away from the public gaze."

Today, prison is still very much a closed world, and while within the past two decades TV cameras have occasionally been able to show a very limited view of life behind bars, they rarely capture anything more than that which the authorities wish them to see. The true misery of imprisonment is deliberately kept secret from the general public, while the right-wing press and unscrupulous politicians conspire to present a picture of cushy 'holiday camps' and 'health farms'. The prison authorities do everything within their power (legal and illegal) to prevent investigative journalists having contact with prisoners and vice-versa, while Michael Howard and Jack Straw imposed a ban preventing visiting journalists reporting anything at all. Though the ban has subsequently been deemed unlawful, the vast majority of journalists are so lazy, cowardly, and/or clueless that it might as well still be in place. READ MORE

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

MOVIE: Kill Bill Vol. I & II (2003/04)







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