The Hairdryer Treatment

swine flu '09 pandemic mix 2.0

those crafty international quacks at the world heath organization recently upped it to a phase-6-full-blown-pandemic, while the grey lady claims easily scapegoatable mexicans might not even be behind this thing.

due to the massive success of swine flu 1.0, which blew out speakers from brooklyn to beirut to buenos aires and all the way to the exotic locale of bloomfield hills, mi (where, reportedly, my mother’s elementary art students refused to complete assignments unless it was on), i thought i would put together a follow up mix of global and domestic bangers in honour of 4th of july weekend and this great nation, where anything is clearly possible.

it’s— now more than ever before— global and highly infectious…

1. Mos Def - The Embassy  
2. Major Lazer - Cash Flow feat. Jahdan Blakkamoore      
3. Suzanne Vega & Thievery Corporation - Tom’s Oriental Diner (DJ Y alias JY Mix)  
4. The Fugees - Ready or Not        
5. Amadou & Mariam - Sabali (Uproot Andy RMX)      
6. Casa De Leones - No Te Veo (Chief Boima & Sogui So Good Mix)  
7. Natasja Saad - Money & Tings (Remix)        
8. Petrona Martinez - La Vida Vale La Pena (Uproot Andy RMX)         
9. 113, Magic System & Mohamed Lamine - Un Gaou A Oran          
10. Omar Souleyman - Dabke 2001          
11. Radiohead - Everything in its Right Place (Gigamesh Remix v2.0)     
12. Toy Selectah - BKLYN Raverton Break        
13. KRS-One - Sound of da Police (DJ Green Lantern Mix)   
14. Santogold - Shove It (Toy Selectah Cumbia Remix)        
15. Y.A.S. - Yaspop      
16. Bounty Killer - Cellular Phone (Max Glazer Mix)        
17. Mobb Deep - Shook Ones Pt.2 (Max Glazer Mix)        
18. Jahdan Blakkamoore - Go Round Payola        
19. Makongo - Angolan Kung Fu     
20. The Streets - Blinded By The Lights (Nero Remix)       
21. Nas - We All Shine On feat. Jadakiss and John Lennon (Lights Out Mix)       
22. Shabba Ranks & Mykal Rose - Shine Eye Gal (Heatwave Mix)   
23. J Dilla - Expensive Whip

**Download Swine Flu 2.0**

well, russian energy oligarchs have never really been known for their racial sensitivities…

Russia’s energy giant Gazprom has signed a $2.5bn (£1.53bn) deal with Nigeria’s state operated NNPC, to invest in a new joint venture.

The new firm, to be called Nigaz, is set to build refineries, pipelines and gas power stations in Nigeria.

a dream

In a deserted place in Iran there is a not very tall stone tower that has neither door nor window. In the only room (with a dirt floor and shaped like a circle) there is a wooden table and a bench. In that circular cell, a man who looks like me is writing in letters I cannot understand a long poem about a man who in another circular cell is writing a poem about a man who in another circular cell … The process never ends and no one will be able to read what the prisoners write.

-jorge luis borges

the return of blood diamonds

Top of those is Zimbabwe, where hundreds of diamond miners were massacred by the army as the government effectively militarised a key mining area late last year. Some in the industry have questioned whether Zimbabwe’s gems match the definition of conflict diamonds as they are helping to fund a government, not a rebel army, but Mr Smillie rejected this: “They are blood diamonds, they have blood all over them.”

Zimbabwe is not alone and a host of other cracks have emerged in the system of safeguards meant to “ensure that diamond purchases were not funding violence”. Monitors have pointed to the illegal trade flourishing in Ivory Coast, Guinea, Venezuela and Lebanon.

actually, they never really went anywhere. diamonds have been one of the dirtiest of trades ever since debeers built up their profits as a result of forced apartheid labor— a fact so often missing in the discussion. read blood diamonds by greg campbell before you splooge 1/3 of your annual salary for a ring that society says you need to buy, or try and argue that the kimberly process made everything a-ok. k?

iranian soccer players banned for life...

i said this was a super-ballsy move at the time, and it looks like the punishment is certainly harsh…

Their gesture attracted worldwide comment and drew the attention of football fans to Iran’s political turmoil. Now the country’s authorities have taken revenge by imposing life bans on players who sported green wristbands in a recent World Cup match in protest against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election.

According to the pro-government newspaper Iran, four players – Ali Karimi, 31, Mehdi Mahdavikia, 32, Hosein Ka’abi, 24 and Vahid Hashemian, 32 – have been “retired” from the sport after their gesture in last Wednesday’s match against South Korea in Seoul.

Cape Town | At this extremely southern destination world football finds itself poised between an obscenity and a dream. The obscenity is the reported £136 million bank draft Real Madrid will relay to fellow European giants Manchester United and AC Milan for Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaká. The immense sum, spent with all the consideration of a sigh, mocks the idea of football as a sport for all. Bobby Charlton calls the £80 million Ronaldo fee, a world record, “a little bit vulgar” but the price of doing business.

The counterpoised dream is that a nation of the rainbow such as South Africa might, on Eduardo Galeano’s subjective scale of wrong and right in soccer, nudge a balance skewed toward profit back toward beauty. Football could shift from shadow to sun, even as the World Cup ventures to the southern hemisphere’s late autumn and winter beginning 11 Jun 2010.

“This is a place where sports is a necessity, not a luxury,” said prisoner Big Mo Masemola of the soccer culture and league apparatus that developed starting in the 1960s on Robben Island, seven miles off Cape Town. He speaks in the book by Chuck Korr and Marvin Close, More Than Just a Game: Football v Apartheid (2008). Throughout formal correspondence among political prisoners seeking to keep alive their ambition of a free South Africa through fastidious application of FIFA regulations to the island-based Makana Football Association, the standard courtesy closing was “Yours in sport.”

onward and upward with the arts (and foreign policy and soccer)

i realize it has been a minute since i updated my blogrolly thing, so i added a fair amount of sites that i’ve been following both personally and professionally. most of them fall into my holy trinity— no, not guns, girls, and ganja— music, foreign policy, and soccer. i also removed some dead/worthless links that were idling around without a function like the 60-year-old popov-guzzling gents outside of the otb on queens blvd. also, i’m really not sure how i functioned as a journalist for 5 years without google reader, i’m totally dependant on it now for day job writing, music writing, soccer fanaticism, and music procuring.

some highlights include the excellent africa is country, dj/rupture’s cumbia blog la congona new cumbia, and perhaps the best lebanese politics source around, qifa nabki. also, generation bass, which has fast become one of my go-to spots for global dance music, bill easterly’s aid watch, and my former professor/dean of iran experts gary sick’s ill blog about iran, gary’s choices.

special shoutouts are due to a few friends as well. red read offers the ruminations of a whip-smart palestinan-american who may be the only person around to know more about the arabic hip-hop scene than me. the candy report will satiate all of your pop culture/hip-hop/r&b/mariah carey-obsessive needs and is written by my former co-worker who shared a cube with me when we wrote for blood diamond russ, before that hypocritical piece of shit laid us off (best thing that ever happened to both of us!). lastly, days like television is a short-form nyc/queens observation blog from my girl D, my best friend from the D, who is a very talented stage actor and all around elusive badass.