the ball laughs, radiant, in the air. he brings her down, puts her to sleep, showers her with compliments, dances with her, and seeing such things never before seen his admirers pity their unborn grandchildren who will never see them.
— eduardo galeano, soccer in sun and shadow
neil young plays the fresh prince theme song…
absolutely brilliant.
Francisco said he never saw the signs. He lost sense of time. He was prepared, he said, to remain in the subway system forever.
No one spoke to him. Asked if he saw any larger meaning in that, he said, “Nobody really cares about the world and about people.”
At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, “snatch and grabs” of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help run a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.
oh, also, these fuckers are posing as aid workers. read scahil’s piece in full.
figured out I went the wrong route, so I got with a sick tight clique and went all out.
the walkmen - good for you’s good for me
after wandering around the west village following a dangerous all-you can drink open bar joint-fundraiser for my soccer team and a rather congenial women’s amateur side, it was probably not the best of ideas to come home and introspectively go through all of my old moleskins, including the legendary circa ‘05-‘06 f-train diaries, and then proceed to drunk dial an ex 500 miles away and talk to her for an hour plus. about nothing. about everything.
memory is selective, and how certain things felt at the time seem so foreign and overstated with the hindsight i now have, especially in light of the sheer amount of shit that went down in the last year, the two thousand and ninth of our lord.
and the sun was shining out, cast my shadow on the walk. another year is going round, in a shadow of this town.
it’s not an allegory, i see it amuses you. true, mr. verkhovensky says that i’m lying under a rock, squashed but not quite crushed to death— just wriggling. that’s a clever way of describing my state.
— fyodor dostoyevsky
Without the thought of preconceptions, things come out like mustard, words free fall with correct spelling, sort of.
Bombs are going off on some of my former stomping grounds, people are dying and all I can really do is just think about how fucked up it all is.
Yeah I can write about it and I can go to protest, but what can I really do, how can I really be a factor?
It’s a disturbing thought. These last two weeks have serious repercussions. Perhaps in my life, my career, my friendships, my political socialization in the post-collegiate, still making no money period, who knows?
things go boom, that much is understood.
i have been attacked by a spider and it hurts…
7-28-06
vladimir putin, hip-hop head.
a true renaissance man, russia’s former dear leader is not only down with judo chops, jean-claude van damme, and icy death glares, he’s also down with the elements of hip-hop!
“graffiti becomes real art, breakdance is something special, it is really a promotion of a healthy lifestyle.”
some amazing scenes today/tonight as the final 2010 world cup field was established.
also, an absolute travesty of justice occurred in paris as the irish got egregiously raped out of a spot in south africa as the ref failed to see two offsides and two handballs (in the same play). yeah, the ‘hand of henry’ condemned the irish out of, yet another, major tournament.
that one is going to hurt, especially since lebanon sucks narrowly missed qualification again. if i didn’t have a match of my own tonight i would be mourning with the rest of the irish via strong irish drinks in dark-lit local irish establishments. AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!
regardless, as the whistle just blew in montevideo with uruguay wrapping up the final spot (suck it costa rica), here are the 32 countries that will learn their groups in the live draw going down on december 4th…
FULL LIST OF TEAMS AT 2010 WORLD CUP
HOSTS: South Africa
AFRICA QUALIFYING: Algeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria
ASIA QUALIFYING: Australia, Japan, North Korea, South Korea
EUROPE QUALIFYING: Denmark, England, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland
SOUTH AMERICA QUALIFYING: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay
NORTH, CENTRAL AMERICA AND QUALIFYING: Honduras, Mexico, United States
ASIA/OCEANIA PLAY-OFF New Zealand
203 days, 40 hours, and 20 minutes until it kicks off!
this went up near monot street in beirut, lebanon during the long, hot, terrible summer of the 2006 war. the text reads ‘beirut will never die’ and was thrown up by graf artist rgb, who is also one of the most talented emcees in the arab world. you can catch some more rgb on my epic arabic hip-hop mix.
i’ve had this image as my desktop at home for 3 years.
and it never will…
photo by michelle woodward
international sporting moment of the year…
egypt scores 5 minutes into injury time to force a playoff game in sudan on wednesday, keeping thier world cup hopes alive and breaking algerian hearts. pandemonium.
the emotion in this 1 minute video is simply incredible.
algeria v. egypt. shit is going down tomorrow…
the video above shows the little welcoming party the algerian national squad received when they touched down in egypt ahead of their clutch final world cup qualifier.
egyptian fans hurled bricks through the algerian team bus, smashing the windows and bloodying 3 of the squads players. check the two vids from inside the van and the player’s injuries. crazyness.
“They struck our bus with large bricks,” said a distraught Antar Yahia. “Players have open head wounds with blood. We were lying down in the bus. All the windows were broken. It makes you fear for your life. As long as our lives are not assured we’re afraid to play this match.”
a bit of background, which coincidentally, has been brewing over for 20 years the last time these two met in a winner-goes-to-the-cup match.
Egypt won 1-0 thanks to a goal by their legendary striker Hossam Hassan to qualify, but the victory was marred by horrendous scenes of bloody riots and fighting on the terraces, in the streets, in the tunnel, and even, most infamously, at the post-match reception, where the Egyptian team doctor lost an eye after being hit by a broken bottle.
in the lead up to tomorrow’s match, provocation on the internet has gotten to fever pitch levels. even arabic rappers are getting in on it.
An Algerian hacker, who called himself “KADER11000,” allegedly infiltrated the websites of President Hosni Mubarak and the government-owned Al Ahram newspaper causing major disruptions last month. In retaliation, Egyptian Internet pirates attacked an Algerian newspaper Elshorouk Al Youmi, crashing the website by bombarding the chat forum with too many comments after the publication had praised Algeria’s World Cup efforts.
And then there has been the songs. The Algerians were the first to strike, releasing a cussing rap video that included the lines: ”Listen to me Pharaohs, you are already cursed… Israel beat you in six days in 1967… We are not the ones who sold Palestine to the Jews.” Unsurprisingly the Egyptians then released their own counter-video which included similarly hate-filled verses including, “Your words are not important, your words do not affect us. Talk to me in French because your Arabic is so broken… We liberated you when France made you slaves.”
it’s about to get hectic tomorrow in cairo.
also, ireland v. france playoff also tomorrow at 3pm eastern. pay-per-view in the pubs. queens blvd will be green and raucous.
the french coach may have made an egregious error labeling ireland ‘england’s b team’ in the run up to this first leg playoff for a world cup birth. if there is one thing you never do to the irish, it’s conflate them, in any way, to their former colonizer.
well, it’s all fun and games and media sensationalism until one of your best friends gets it and then— within a week— it spreads to his wife, parents, friends, sister, 1-year old niece, and co-workers. um, yeah. shit is for real.
in times like these, some get vaccinated, others stockpile tamiflu, many put their trust in high-tech holy water dispensaries, a few simply flee to south dakota.
i inoculate with multilateral bass-y mixes. no mercury included, promise.
here is vol. 3, enjoy.
1. K’naan & J.Period - Don’t Think Twice (Messengers Remix)
2. Los Destellos feat. Fefe - Elsa (Sonido Martines Remix)
3. Jahdan Blakkamoore - Get Hustlin
4. Phaseone - Villain Jawnt
5. Sir Mixalot - Posse On Broadway (Diplo Mix)
6. Los Rakas - Fuego En Su Cuerpo
7. Zomby - Digital Fauna
8. The Very Best - Nsokoto
9. Schlachthofbronx feat. Slush Puppy Kids - Too High
10. Magic System - Bouger Bouger
11. Uproot Andy and Geko Jones - Manuelita (Remix)
12. Elephant Man & Ishawna - Give It To Me
13. El Hijo de la Cumbia - La Cumbia Es Un Tango
14. G-Side feat. Shyft - Hit Da Block
15. Jahdan Blakkamoore feat. Durrty Goodz - Mesmerized
16. Checkpoint303 - Rissala-Min-Qalandia
17. Gnonnas Pedro & His Dadjes Band - La Musica En Vérité
previously…
“You know who’s guarding Hillary Clinton in Afghanistan right now? Blackwater,” Scahill told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Tuesday night. “You know who guards members of Congress? Blackwater. They have half a billion dollars in contracts in Afghanistan right now. CIA, State Department, Defense Department. Why is President Obama keeping these guys on the payroll? There has never been a company in recent history that made the case that corporations are corrupt, evil organizations [better] than Blackwater.”
…”Another way of looking at this is Blackwater knows where a lot of bodies are buried,” Scahill told Maddow. “These are guys who worked on the CIA assassination program, the drone bombing campaign, and regarding all of the senior officials, they know a heck of a lot about what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, and those are not guys that you want on the other side of the fence if you’re running Washington.”
scahill was speaking on this bombshell in the times today that shows how blackwater bribed the iraqi government after the 2007 nisour square massacre. sad, sad state of affairs.
