AN HOUR OF…..THE GO-BETWEENS
1 hour ago
Friday, 30 July 2010
Fuck Ronald Reagan!
Bonus Audio:
Gorillaz Live In Damascus
.
What you are about to hear is the sound of a band coming full circle while embarking on a new beginning.
When Damon Albarn decided to extend his Gorillaz project for a third album, he looked to Syria for inspiration. It was March 2009, and the Britpop icon was obsessed with Arabic orchestral music, so he took his demos to Damascus and recorded with the National Orchestra for Arabic Music.
While in Syria, Albarn worked with conductor Issam Rafea, who composed a gorgeous piece full of strings, woodwinds and hand percussion for Gorillaz’s third album, Plastic Beach. The sessions only resulted in the intro and outro of “White Flag,” the album’s not-so-ambiguous plea for peace in the Middle East, but those two minutes helped cement the relationship Rafea and his musicians had with Albarn.
Just look at what happened on Sunday night.
Gorillaz returned to the desert with Plastic Beach‘s cast of all-stars in tow for a special performance at the Damascus Citadel, a 1,000-year-old walled palace in the northwest corner of the city. Under a full moon, the cartoon crew — stripped of its members’ animated alter egos — shared the stage with Syria’s National Orchestra and marked what we can only hope is a new era of music in the Middle East.
“The pinnacle of our exploit,” Gorillaz bassist Murdoc Niccals tells NPR Music in a rambling introduction to the concert. “It shows that it is possible to perform there. This shouldn’t be a one-off gig — it should be the start of many, many bands going over there.”
This wasn’t the first time Rafea’s orchestra played live with Gorillaz — the band brought it along to festival performances in Spain, Denmark and Glastonbury, England — but it meant so much more this time around. Rafea got to showcase his composition from the podium in an extended intro to “White Flag,” complete with
British MCs Bashy and Kano
The lineup included:
- Bobby Womack
- De La Soul
- Bootie Brown of The Pharcyde
- Paul Simonon and Mick Jones of The Clash
- Shaun Ryder of The Happy Mondays
- Bashy
- Kano
The most important guest, however, might have been Eslam Jawaad, the Syrian rapper whom Albarn met in London and worked with in The Good, The Bad and The Queen. Murdoc Niccals credits Jawaad with bringing Gorillaz to Damascus, and the rapper is billed as an inspiration in Plastic Beach‘s liner notes under his given name, Wissam Khodur. When he launched into Arabic in the show-stopping “Clint Eastwood,” the thousands of screaming fans reacted as if they’d been waiting all their lives to hear it. It’s a truly magical moment.
May there be many more like it to come.
Listen @'npr'
Endgame in Afghanistan: 'It's taken a year to move 20km'
As the war in Afghanistan enters its final chapter, Sean Smith's brutal, uncompromising film from the Helmand frontline shows the horrific chaos of a stalemate that is taking its toll in blood
• Read Sean Smith's extraordinary diary of his time on the Afghanistan frontline
• Read Sean Smith's extraordinary diary of his time on the Afghanistan frontline
Jazzcats Crossing The Hudson
Click to enlarge
The classic painting “Jazzcats Crossing the Hudson” will appear on the next edition of Madlib Medicine Show, the 8th in the series, a jazz mixtape titled “Advanced Jazz”.
from Wikipedia:
“Jazzcats Crossing the Hudson is an 1851 oil-on-canvas painting by German American artist Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze. It pre-emptively commemorates the arrival in New York City of jazz greats Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, Steve Kuhn and others. The painting is remarkable for the fact that it was created decades before the birth of any of these jazz artists.”
Coca-Cola Moves into Mezcal
Little Earl, who maintains a certain interest in our local drink, took a twenty-peso tour of the new mezcal distillery located on the road to Tlacolula de Matamoros, on the Cristobal Colón highway, about half an hour from Oaxaca City. Tlacolula lures tourists to its huge weekly market where you can buy live turkeys, oxen yokes, seasonal vegetables, rice drinks, enamel pots, and artisan work ranging from carved fantastic animals to embroidered blouses. Occasional musicians entertain while shoppers stroll areas dedicated to fresh produce, shoes, socks, and plastic buckets. Along the main street, small shops sell mezcal. It’s artisan mezcal: an artisan liquor cooked in clay containers, from home-grown agave.
When Little Earl entered the Casa Armando Guillermo Prieto (Casa AGP) distillery, whose security little Earl describes as “tough as any airport”, they waived their metal detecting wand over him and discovered his digital camera. “No sir,” the security guard said. “It is the policy of Coca-Cola to not allow photographs.” Coca- Cola? Who knew? His cell phone in the other pocket suffered the same temporary confiscation.
S.A. de C.V. stands for “Sociedad Anónima de Capital Variable”. It describes a company whose capital partners are anonymous and of variable investment. Most foreign investments in Mexico are designated S.A. de C.V. CIMSA S.A. de C.V.-Coca Cola, a consortium of businesses “100% Mexican” produces Casa AGP mezcal. I also saw it written in inverse order, as Coca-Cola-CIMSA.
CIMSA was founded in 1925 and currently operates through three self-described “Strategic Business Units”: Soft drinks; BEDLA (Bebidas de los Angeles) which sells purified water; and Casa AGP, the newest unit, oriented toward commercialization of mezcal, to sell inside Mexico about 20% of product, with 80% destined for foreign consumption. To put the enterprise in perspective, the same Group that bottles Coke in Cuernavaca built the mezcal plant in Oaxaca. It also built the international airport in Cuernavaca.
Casa AGP inaugurated its Oaxaca distillery in August, 2008 in a village named Lanacci. Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, Senator Adolfo Toledo Infanzón, Secretary of Tourism Beatriz Rodríguez Casasnovas, and Secretary of Economy Enrique Sada Fernández among other officials, all carefully pre-selected, attended. Head honcho Colombo Álvarez asserted then, that in five years Oaxaca mezcal would be positioned in the international European and Asian markets. In the first year the product would arrive in Spain, the USA, China, Korea and Thailand. Subsequently, they would sell in Germany, Russia and Italy. He was right on.
Director General José Luis Magaña stated that more than US$ 48,000,000 was invested in plant construction. Purita Guillermo Prieto Rivera, an owner of CIMSA-Coca Cola in sites such as Toluca, Cuernavaca and Ciudad Altamirano, (her surnames “Guillermo Prieto” indicate her Casa AGP connection) and Antonio Gómezlince, also of Grupo CIMSA, stated Casa AGP’s goal: immediate production of 15,000 liters daily, at one-third of full capacity. Casa AGP presently (February, 2010) bottles about 20,000 liters daily.
CIMSA is sister to GEMSA, another corporation listed along with Coca-Cola; the precise relationships of the players remains hidden. CIMSA Group, according to their own advertising, is expansionary, bringing into production new products and brands. The fancy gold label on its mezcal bottles displays its brand-name: Zignum, Made in Mexico. “Casa Armando Guillermo Prieto,” it reads, “brings to your palate a mystic drink made with art, quality, technology and the warmth of its people.” Umm.
And an output of 45,000 liters daily for the global market? That’s not art, it’s agro-industry. Casa AGP, in partnership with Coca-Cola and with an investment minimum of 60 million dollars, manufactures mezcal inside an industrial complex. AGP Wine & Spirits Group, the international trade name, distills its product with technical standards, very different from artisan mezcal; the average artisan palenque bottles 2– 3,000 liters per month, cooking agave plants over wood burning fires. Each bottle off the AGP line, in contrast, precisely mirrors the others; following a chemical test for each vat, slight artificial adjustments are added as necessary, to produce consistent “flavor, pain, color, and aroma.” By vat, I mean stainless steel drums. Despite the photo prohibition, Coca-Cola doesn’t keep the gleaming, vast manufacturing process a secret: on the Zignum website flash the bright stainless-steel drums, the rows of assembly-line bottles. Intermixed in Zignum’s on-site film runs the art and warmth part: scenes from other mezcal localities. You can also check YouTube...
Continue reading
Nancy Davies @'NarcoNews'
Apologies that this information is from some months ago, but with all the news on the web and the business practices that maintain secrecy of involvement, is little wonder I took so long to find, with the recent resolution by the UN declaring Water and Sanitation Basic Human Rights, http://www.truth-out.org/un-declares-water-and-sanitation-basic-human-rights61817 , the disappearance of valuable water supplies in areas of multinational exploitation takes on new meaning. Can the people in these regions ever be truly compensated by business for the destruction of such life-sustaining water supplies?
 Zignum Mezcal label D.R. 2010 Zignum Me |
S.A. de C.V. stands for “Sociedad Anónima de Capital Variable”. It describes a company whose capital partners are anonymous and of variable investment. Most foreign investments in Mexico are designated S.A. de C.V. CIMSA S.A. de C.V.-Coca Cola, a consortium of businesses “100% Mexican” produces Casa AGP mezcal. I also saw it written in inverse order, as Coca-Cola-CIMSA.
CIMSA was founded in 1925 and currently operates through three self-described “Strategic Business Units”: Soft drinks; BEDLA (Bebidas de los Angeles) which sells purified water; and Casa AGP, the newest unit, oriented toward commercialization of mezcal, to sell inside Mexico about 20% of product, with 80% destined for foreign consumption. To put the enterprise in perspective, the same Group that bottles Coke in Cuernavaca built the mezcal plant in Oaxaca. It also built the international airport in Cuernavaca.
Casa AGP inaugurated its Oaxaca distillery in August, 2008 in a village named Lanacci. Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, Senator Adolfo Toledo Infanzón, Secretary of Tourism Beatriz Rodríguez Casasnovas, and Secretary of Economy Enrique Sada Fernández among other officials, all carefully pre-selected, attended. Head honcho Colombo Álvarez asserted then, that in five years Oaxaca mezcal would be positioned in the international European and Asian markets. In the first year the product would arrive in Spain, the USA, China, Korea and Thailand. Subsequently, they would sell in Germany, Russia and Italy. He was right on.
 Ulises Ruiz inaugurates mezcal plant “Casa Armando Guillermo Prieto” D.R. Photo 2008 El Piñero |
CIMSA is sister to GEMSA, another corporation listed along with Coca-Cola; the precise relationships of the players remains hidden. CIMSA Group, according to their own advertising, is expansionary, bringing into production new products and brands. The fancy gold label on its mezcal bottles displays its brand-name: Zignum, Made in Mexico. “Casa Armando Guillermo Prieto,” it reads, “brings to your palate a mystic drink made with art, quality, technology and the warmth of its people.” Umm.
And an output of 45,000 liters daily for the global market? That’s not art, it’s agro-industry. Casa AGP, in partnership with Coca-Cola and with an investment minimum of 60 million dollars, manufactures mezcal inside an industrial complex. AGP Wine & Spirits Group, the international trade name, distills its product with technical standards, very different from artisan mezcal; the average artisan palenque bottles 2– 3,000 liters per month, cooking agave plants over wood burning fires. Each bottle off the AGP line, in contrast, precisely mirrors the others; following a chemical test for each vat, slight artificial adjustments are added as necessary, to produce consistent “flavor, pain, color, and aroma.” By vat, I mean stainless steel drums. Despite the photo prohibition, Coca-Cola doesn’t keep the gleaming, vast manufacturing process a secret: on the Zignum website flash the bright stainless-steel drums, the rows of assembly-line bottles. Intermixed in Zignum’s on-site film runs the art and warmth part: scenes from other mezcal localities. You can also check YouTube...
Continue reading
Nancy Davies @'NarcoNews'
Apologies that this information is from some months ago, but with all the news on the web and the business practices that maintain secrecy of involvement, is little wonder I took so long to find, with the recent resolution by the UN declaring Water and Sanitation Basic Human Rights, http://www.truth-out.org/un-declares-water-and-sanitation-basic-human-rights61817 , the disappearance of valuable water supplies in areas of multinational exploitation takes on new meaning. Can the people in these regions ever be truly compensated by business for the destruction of such life-sustaining water supplies?
Proto-fascism
Is the Tea Party racist? Democrats who play liberals on TV say it isn't. Vice President Joe Biden says that "at least elements that were involved with some of the Tea Party folks expressed racist views."
Certainly a sizeable minority of tea partiers' "take America back" rhetoric is motivated by resentment that a black guy is president. "Take America back" from whom? You know whom. It ain't white CEOs.
Thursday, 29 July 2010
Die young, live fast: The evolution of an underclass
When life expectancy is short, it makes sense to have babies early (Image: Paula Bronstein/Getty)
From feckless fathers and teenaged mothers to so-called feral kids, the media seems to take a voyeuristic pleasure in documenting the lives of the "underclass". Whether they are inclined to condemn or sympathise, commentators regularly ask how society got to be this way. There is seldom agreement, but one explanation you are unlikely to hear is that this kind of "delinquent" behaviour is a sensible response to the circumstances of a life constrained by poverty. Yet that is exactly what some evolutionary biologists are now proposing.
There is no reason to view the poor as stupid or in any way different from anyone else, says Daniel Nettle of the University of Newcastle in the UK. All of us are simply human beings, making the best of the hand life has dealt us. If we understand this, it won't just change the way we view the lives of the poorest in society, it will also show how misguided many current efforts to tackle society's problems are - and it will suggest better solutions.
Evolutionary theory predicts that if you are a mammal growing up in a harsh, unpredictable environment where you are susceptible to disease and might die young, then you should follow a "fast" reproductive strategy - grow up quickly, and have offspring early and close together so you can ensure leaving some viable progeny before you become ill or die. For a range of animal species there is evidence that this does happen. Now research suggests that humans are no exception.
Certainly the theory holds up in comparisons between people in rich and poor countries. Bobbi Low and her colleagues at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor compared information from nations across the world to see if the age at which women have children changes according to their life expectancy (Cross-Cultural Research, vol 42, p 201). "We found that the human data fit the general mammalian pattern," says Low. "The shorter life expectancy was, the earlier women had their first child."
But can the same biological principles explain the difference in behaviour between rich and poor within a developed, post-industrialised country? Nettle, for one, believes it can. In a study of over 8000 families, he found that in the most deprived parts of England people can barely expect 50 years of healthy life, nearly two decades less than in affluent areas. And sure enough, women from poor neighbourhoods are likely to have their babies at an early age and in quick succession. They have smaller babies and they breastfeed less, both of which make it easier to get pregnant again sooner (Behavioral Ecology, DOI: 10.1093/beheco/arp202).
"If you've only got two-thirds as much time in your life as someone in a different neighbourhood, then all of your decisions about when to start having babies, when to become a grandparent and so on have to be foreshortened by a third," says Nettle. "So it shouldn't really surprise us that women in the poorest areas are having their babies at around 20 compared to 30 in the richest ones. That's exactly what you would expect."...
Continue reading
Mairi Macleod @'New Scientist'
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
