and speaking of Solaar

ParisDJs.com - check out the podcasted mixes - 'A History of Double Bass in Music vol.1' [mp3]

Next Blog >> find of the day

HaikuYeah

quick fave :

waiting to say
oh fuck;
me

which isn't even a haiku, but whatever.

joie de vivre

It is amazing what a random email asking you to listen to a track or two will do to your listening vim. More on that later, but I'm stuck at work late and came across this cinematic track "Que Sera" by Wax Tailor, a product of the French Hip Hop scene, which I am somewhat partial to because of Solaar and Cam.

So much for Convenience

"Because of the complexity of the problem, environmental skepticism was once tenable. No longer. It is time to flip from skepticism to activism.”

Go see the movie. Go read the book. Learn something.

And maybe sell your stupidly big SUV.

[related]

9 months later...and it was worth it

Back in September Brendan Benson and The White Stripes were in Brooklyn and collaborating on an album. Said album was purchased yesterday, and it is was worth the incubation period.

Early front-runner for favorite song - "Intimate Secretary"

UPDATE - The album cover features one of the anonymous band members, not sure if he is bass or kit, looking like a Hanson brother.

[via]

Let me start by saying I rarely, if ever, click on blogads. I probably should more often in order to support blogs I like, but I don't. Well, this is a short story of clicking on an ad on a blog that I frequent.

I read the preface of the advertized book and I am now curious. Not because the author's thesis is unique, but because it reminds me of my own spiritual journey that I abandoned due to frustration; I am one of those 'spiritual' people who doesn't like 'religion'.

His original premise is what struck me at first;

Religion never satisfied me, and often infuriated me...I thought of myself first and foremost as a human being...I would be progressing intellectually and spiritually only by understanding what was universally right and natural in life, why these things were right and natural, and how to live accordingly.

Having studied a wee bit of philosophy, the moral absolutes (i.e. universally right and natural) are a problem, but I won't let that de-rail his argument.

His next premise is the kicker.

Understanding that the idea of God signified absolute unity, I concluded that anyone advocating unquestioning loyalty to a restrictive group such as a faith, ethnicity, or nation was in fact promoting the fall of humanity by advancing its division...religions were never intended to support the search for an expansive God and are actually antithetical to it. Probing further, I discovered that human beings aspired to know God long before religions were established, suggesting that the real worship of God could outlive the forms of worship currently in existence. Simultaneously, I found an unholy trinity of political, economic, and religious forces fostering and perpetuating massive greed, poverty, and ignorance.

And with the way the Vatican is attacking the most recent alternate version of events the Vatican claims ownership to, it is hard to argue with the negative effects of organized religion.

His goal is a bit hippy-ideal, but heart-warming nonetheless, and we all could use that once in a while.

It is my hope that by encouraging an inner search for God based on timeless techniques beneficial to spiritual freedom, this book contributes to a broadening of perspectives around the world, culminating in the eventual unification of humanity.

Velvel, the Misfit

I was watching CN8 on Sunday a.m. this past weekend, and the Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, Lawrence Velvel, author of 'Misfits in America', hosted a program dissecting gasoline prices and the various forces at work. Not surprisingly the conventional cries of "It is supply and demand, stupid" were shown to be false. (Last week on the 'The Daily Show' Jon Stewart knelt before the altar of the WSJ and one of its editors(?) who trotted out the ECON 101 storyline. I was disappointed Stewart wasn't more prepared to refute her argument/explanations.) And sadly, quite the opposite was posited as true; that America is in fact flush with supply.

So when you hear about tax rebates and halting ethanol tariffs and other such poppycock, know that the solution is well within our means. Too bad the oil companies have politicians, the mass media, and commodity markets in their back pocket.

Fact: Energy futures' markets were created by energy companies in the early 1990s because they recognized the opportunity to make tremendous amounts of money.

Cut and Run? You Bet.

By Lt. Gen. William E. Odom

Why America must get out of Iraq now.

Withdraw immediately or stay the present course? That is the key question about the war in Iraq today. American public opinion is now decidedly against the war. From liberal New England, where citizens pass town-hall resolutions calling for withdrawal, to the conservative South and West, where more than half of “red state” citizens oppose the war, Americans want out. That sentiment is understandable.

The prewar dream of a liberal Iraqi democracy friendly to the United States is no longer credible. No Iraqi leader with enough power and legitimacy to control the country will be pro-American. Still, U.S. President George W. Bush says the United States must stay the course. Why? Let’s consider his administration’s most popular arguments for not leaving Iraq.

If we leave, there will be a civil war.
In reality, a civil war in Iraq began just weeks after U.S. forces toppled Saddam. Any close observer could see that then; today, only the blind deny it. Even President Bush, who is normally impervious to uncomfortable facts, recently admitted that Iraq has peered into the abyss of civil war. He ought to look a little closer. Iraqis are fighting Iraqis. Insurgents have killed far more Iraqis than Americans. That’s civil war.

Withdrawal will encourage the terrorists.
True, but that is the price we are doomed to pay. Our continued occupation of Iraq also encourages the killers—precisely because our invasion made Iraq safe for them. Our occupation also left the surviving Baathists with one choice: Surrender, or ally with al Qaeda. They chose the latter. Staying the course will not change this fact. Pulling out will most likely result in Sunni groups’ turning against al Qaeda and its sympathizers, driving them out of Iraq entirely.

Before U.S. forces stand down, Iraqi security forces must stand up.
The problem in Iraq is not military competency; it is political consolidation. Iraq has a large officer corps with plenty of combat experience from the Iran-Iraq war. Moktada al-Sadr’s Shiite militia fights well today without U.S. advisors, as do Kurdish pesh merga units. The problem is loyalty. To whom can officers and troops afford to give their loyalty? The political camps in Iraq are still shifting. So every Iraqi soldier and officer today risks choosing the wrong side. As a result, most choose to retain as much latitude as possible to switch allegiances. All the U.S. military trainers in the world cannot remove that reality. But political consolidation will. It should by now be clear that political power can only be established via Iraqi guns and civil war, not through elections or U.S. colonialism by ventriloquism.


Setting a withdrawal deadline will damage the morale of U.S. troops.
Hiding behind the argument of troop morale shows no willingness to accept the responsibilities of command. The truth is, most wars would stop early if soldiers had the choice of whether or not to continue. This is certainly true in Iraq, where a withdrawal is likely to raise morale among U.S. forces. A recent Zogby poll suggests that most U.S. troops would welcome an early withdrawal deadline. But the strategic question of how to extract the United States from the Iraq disaster is not a matter to be decided by soldiers. Carl von Clausewitz spoke of two kinds of courage: first, bravery in the face of mortal danger; second, the willingness to accept personal responsibility for command decisions. The former is expected of the troops. The latter must be demanded of high-level commanders, including the president.

Withdrawal would undermine U.S. credibility in the world.
Were the United States a middling power, this case might hold some water. But for the world’s only superpower, it’s patently phony. A rapid reversal of our present course in Iraq would improve U.S. credibility around the world. The same argument was made against withdrawal from Vietnam. It was proved wrong then and it would be proved wrong today. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the world’s opinion of the United States has plummeted, with the largest short-term drop in American history. The United States now garners as much international esteem as Russia. Withdrawing and admitting our mistake would reverse this trend. Very few countries have that kind of corrective capacity. I served as a military attaché in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow during Richard Nixon’s Watergate crisis. When Nixon resigned, several Soviet officials who had previously expressed disdain for the United States told me they were astonished. One diplomat said, “Only your country is powerful enough to do this. It would destroy my country.”

Two facts, however painful, must be recognized, or we will remain perilously confused in Iraq. First, invading Iraq was not in the interests of the United States. It was in the interests of Iran and al Qaeda. For Iran, it avenged a grudge against Saddam for his invasion of the country in 1980. For al Qaeda, it made it easier to kill Americans. Second, the war has paralyzed the United States in the world diplomatically and strategically. Although relations with Europe show signs of marginal improvement, the trans-Atlantic alliance still may not survive the war. Only with a rapid withdrawal from Iraq will Washington regain diplomatic and military mobility. Tied down like Gulliver in the sands of Mesopotamia, we simply cannot attract the diplomatic and military cooperation necessary to win the real battle against terror. Getting out of Iraq is the precondition for any improvement.

In fact, getting out now may be our only chance to set things right in Iraq. For starters, if we withdraw, European politicians would be more likely to cooperate with us in a strategy for stabilizing the greater Middle East. Following a withdrawal, all the countries bordering Iraq would likely respond favorably to an offer to help stabilize the situation. The most important of these would be Iran. It dislikes al Qaeda as much as we do. It wants regional stability as much as we do. It wants to produce more oil and gas and sell it. If its leaders really want nuclear weapons, we cannot stop them. But we can engage them.

None of these prospects is possible unless we stop moving deeper into the “big sandy” of Iraq. America must withdraw now.

Lt. Gen. William E. Odom (Ret.) is senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and professor at Yale University. He was director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988.

St.Elsewhere's Fire

"sometimes it sounds like hip-hop soul, sometimes it reminds you of golden oldies, and sometimes it sounds like current indie rock with a little more flare. There's just not very much music out there that can actually make you feel cooler just listening to it. But this album does."

Done, and done!