2014/01/30

folk with a small c. ...


nice pullover...

 ...Seeger saw his work with folk music as complementary to radical cultural theorists and composers such as Eisler, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer. But while these thinkers had at best a complicated relationship with the new popular music, Seeger threw himself headlong into it, arguing that there was something in such music that workers not only identified with but that might set their own natural creativity ablaze.

This was not the overwhelming of the sophisticated by the crude, of “serious music” by the “lowbrow,” as many have argued. It was a conscious political and cultural outlook for which the tasks of lifting up forms of art forged in the subaltern and pushing against the formalities of bourgeois culture could be one and the same. Though Seeger was key in pushing the argument within the Communist Party, he represented many others in the progressive and radical ranks of artistic expressives.

The Communist Party would end up embracing folk music as a tactic of its Popular Front phase. And though most of the aesthetics that rose from the Popular Front years hewed closer to the realist than the experimental, very few of them would survive the hammer of McCarthyism. Folk, on the other hand, would endure well beyond the decline of the American CP.

excerpts from

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2014/01/28

the greatest story ever told...





they moved all their energies and resources
from the branding magic of the video images
to the sizzle of the bass line and the fervor of ms cherry's voice.
brass violence. swords fighting in the background.



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2014/01/27

big data and you OR of solving problems with apps...




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overweight.climatechange.redditometro.healthcare.terrorism.taxevasion.happiness.dumpsystem.security










"there is this very interesting alliance that is being formed between companies building technological infrastructure, on the one hand, and these new forms of governance which do devolve around solving problems by essentially asking citizens to change their behaviour..."


evgeny morozov on
(lecture in english)


 "you can have citizens actually have citizens do the right thing whitout ever understanding what the right reason to do the right thing is"



 "we do have to figure out how many of the apps that we previously considered nonpolitical and purely in the realm of economical relations have aquired a political dimension."








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overweight.climatechange.redditometro.healthcare.terrorism.taxevasion.happiness.dumpsystem.security





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2014/01/21

a letter to the queen of...



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time to get some role models out there

always nice to hear from ms hunger.
try to catch her in concert.
she's impressive.


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sophie hunger - leave me with the monkeys (2010)

 sophie hunger - d'red (2010)


 it's almost a revelation to see how her stunning vocals get even more beautiful when she uses her mother tongue as she does in "d'red"...


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2014/01/19

“if you love what you do, it’s not ‘work,’” aka "trust the carlyle group..."






... or trust steve jobs! what do you prefer? dig into his graduation speech form 2005:

"You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

In these four sentences, the words “you” and “your” appear eight times. This focus on the individual isn’t surprising coming from Jobs, who cultivated a very specific image of himself as a worker: inspired, casual, passionate—all states agreeable with ideal romantic love. Jobs conflated his besotted worker-self with his company so effectively that his black turtleneck and jeans became metonyms for all of Apple and the labor that maintains it."


"... But by portraying Apple as a labor of his individual love, Jobs elided the labor of untold thousands in Apple’s factories, hidden from sight on the other side of the planet—the very labor that allowed Jobs to actualize his love."


"... In ignoring most work and reclassifying the rest as love, DWYL may be the most elegant anti-worker ideology around. Why should workers assemble and assert their class interests if there’s no such thing as work? 
"Do what you love" disguises the fact that being able to choose a career primarily for personal reward is a privilege, a sign of socioeconomic class."



 link to the full piece
 (english)



originally published on jacobinmag.com










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falling up from the deep...



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i'm not quite sure about it's 
kinkiness,
you this is a 
a machine
 for sure...

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buy here


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2014/01/17

phantasmagorien...


ethnische zugehörigkeiten als erklärungsmuster für den quälenden syrischen bürgerkrieg bestimmen unsere berichterstattung. nur, das erklärungsmuster ist teil des problems, kein neutrales, vergrößerndes fernrohr für eine ferne realität. in syrien (und dem nachbarland libanon) ist der ethnische blick auf die vergangenheit eine tödliche waffe, ein wort, das fleisch wird, stets von neuem...



(german)


... Doch wäh­rend [der libanesische Politiker] Eid die Mei­nungs­füh­rer­schaft unter den Ala­wi­ten für sich be­an­sprucht und auch in der Sicht der meis­ten sun­ni­ti­schen »Nach­barn« die Ala­wi­ten ein mo­no­li­thi­scher pro-sy­ri­scher und an­ti-sun­ni­ti­scher Block sind, sieht die Rea­li­tät an­ders aus.

...Die heute von den meis­ten Me­di­en über­nom­me­ne Rede von As­sads »ala­wi­ti­schem Re­gime« in Sy­ri­en wurde in den letz­ten Jahr­zehn­ten von ver­schie­de­nen Pu­bli­zis­tIn­nen, Wis­sen­schaft­le­rIn­nen sowie sun­ni­ti­schen Is­la­mis­ten ver­brei­tet. Oft war von »ala­wi­ti­schen Herr­schafts­plä­nen« und einem »ala­wi­ti­schen Putsch« die Rede. Die Kon­struk­ti­on von ho­mo­ge­nen Kol­lek­ti­ven er­freut sich ins­be­son­de­re in der Ge­schichts­schrei­bung des Nahen Os­tens gro­ßer Be­liebt­heit und ver­spricht ein­fa­che Ant­wor­ten.

...Um sich der sun­ni­ti­schen Be­völ­ke­rungs­mehr­heit ge­gen­über zu le­gi­ti­mie­ren, be­gann Assad, re­gel­mä­ßig die Mo­schee zu be­su­chen, ließ ein Fa­mi­li­en­mit­glied eine is­la­mi­sche Stif­tung grün­den und un­ter­stütz­te auch das Wir­ken schii­ti­scher Geist­li­cher im Li­ba­non. Nach der »Is­la­mi­schen Re­vo­lu­ti­on« in Iran schränk­te er al­ler­dings ira­ni­sche Ak­ti­vi­tä­ten zur Mis­sio­nie­rung in Sy­ri­en ein und be­stärk­te sun­ni­ti­sche Geist­li­che beim Auf­bau eines Netz­wer­kes von Ko­ran­schu­len in ganz Sy­ri­en.


 ________________________________________________



alles andere als neutral ist - wir wissen es spätestens seit den balkankriegen - auch die ethnische kartographie:
manche karten sind vorsichtig, wenn sie syrischen boden ethnisch einfärben. sie betonen die ungenauigkeit, mit der sie arbeiten, zeigen überlappungen:


andere hingegen wissen es ganz genau:




take...





‘Take your portion’: A victim speaks out about rape in Syria






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2014/01/12

it's just a gang bang...


...to blow away the blues




the sensational alex harvey band - gang bang (1973)


ahm... you get the  i r o n y ? well, one can't be sure about that nowadays, since YouPorn & co. have been around for some years, now and the internet brought many changes for our take on sex and desire. we went from the analog days, when everyone had to make up their own sexual fantasies (how effortful!), to our high-performance days of WePorn...





want some more of the sensational alex harvey and his equally sensational band?

alex harvey the new band - the mafia stole my guitar (1979)


alex harvey the new band - shakin' all over (1979)



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2014/01/07

a monstrous and novel wonder...

Conjoined twins byzantium


"At this time male twins, who came from the region of Cappadocia, were wandering through many parts of the Roman Empire; I myself, who am writing these lines, have often seen them in Asia, a monstrous and novel wonder. For the various parts of their bodies were whole and complete, but their sides were attached from the armpit to the hip, uniting their bodies and combining them into one. And with the adjacent arms they embraced each other’s necks, and in the others carried staffs, on which they supported themselves as they walked. They were thirty years old and well developed physically, appearing youthful and vigorous. On long journeys they used to ride on a mule, sitting sideways on the saddle in the female fashion, and they had indescribably sweet and good dispositions..."
 Leo the Deacon, 10th century, Byzantium

 (english)


falls jemand mehr über das monströse in geschichte und gegenwart hören will...
(german)



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2014/01/06

keep talking...







 a  delicious    thunder     for       y  ou r      p han   tom        s  un     d   a y             eve    ni   n      g     . .    .


buy here...

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