Del.icio.us links for July 14th through August 1st:
- TRAP THEM’S RYAN MCKENNEY RESPONDS TO SACHA DUNABLE’S METALSUCKS COLUMN – Last week, as part of his recurring MetalSucks column, Blogronaut, Intronaut’s Sacha Dunable asked the question: “Are corporate-sponsored metal shows killing the live concert market?” The blog garnered a large and impassioned response, not just from our readers who left comments, but from industry insiders who e-mailed us their thoughts directly. One of those people was Trap Them vocalist Ryan McKenney, who, with no prompting whatsoever from us, wrote the below. And since we like to think of MetalSucks as a place where all kinds of points of view can be weighed and considered, we’re running it! We hope you enjoy…
Tags: metal touring economics band music ethics - Resisting the cuts: building a campaign – I’m old enough to remember the Thatcher years. What I mostly recall is just how ineffective most campaigning we did was. For sure you could sometimes mobilise many people, but not always to much effect. So how should we approach the challenge we face today in campaigning against the cuts? There are two types of opposition already getting going. Many are already defending “their” bit of the public sector saying “don’t cut us, what we do is too important”. Others oppose cuts on economic grounds fearful they will push the UK into recession, though they may well want cuts further down the line. But unions and others combine these positions, and there is already an interesting debate – mainly online – about how best to maximise opposition to the cuts in general and thus shift government policy.
Tags: cuts coalition activism strategy - Bad translation makes fundamentalists of us all – “I was recently watching the Spanish documentary To Shoot an Elephant, about the Israeli attacks on Gaza in January 2009. The documentary is good, but the subtitles in English struck me as strange: “For the sake of Allah”, “May Allah protect [your sons] for you”, “May Allah reward you” and other references to God are recurrent throughout the film. I couldn’t help thinking that, when translated literally into English, these expressions make Arabs sound very religious – or even like fundamentalists – in the eyes of those who have a tendency to jump to quick conclusions. And no need to say there are many of these in the current context of Islamophobia as it has been shown before on Cif.”
Tags: language arabs phrases colloquialisms - Fawwaz Traboulsi Interviewed by Paul Jay, “A Defining Moment of the 2006 Israeli War on Lebanon” – I think the main existential threat against Israel is Israelis themselves, who believe — unfortunately, in more and more numbers — that there is no more hope for peace and who sabotage peace. So, to start with, there’s no Israeli partner for peace, let alone everything else. The other is this stubborn idea of trying to control 300 million Arabs by force and refusing to be part of the region. And as much as Israel is this military state, I think it’s bringing its own downfall, especially in that for the first time in its anti-guerrilla warfare it’s failing — I mean, both in southern Lebanon and in Gaza. It’s becoming more and more an army that kills civilians, including women and children. And it’s obvious that any prospect for any just peace has been simply obliterated by the advent of Mr. Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing allies. So this is the real danger for peace, for security of all the peoples of the region.
Tags: israel lebanon palestine hezbollah iran war peace middleeast interview - Lessons We Should Have Learned From the Iraqi Sanctions – “Very few people have been aware of exactly how the U.S. worked to maintain these sanctions over more than a decade. The Iraq sanctions regime was managed by a committee of the Security Council known as the “661 Committee.” Created by Resolution 661, it mirrored the Security Council itself, containing representatives from each state on the Council. The committee met behind closed doors. For years, the minutes were not even available to the committee’s own members. But in the course of my research, I obtained access to thousands of pages of the committee’s documents, including their minutes and internal reports. Consequently, it was possible to document what went on, in a setting where none of the participants thought there would ever be a public record of what they said and did”
Tags: politics history usa iraq sanctions war - gnimmel: This are serious thread – The greatest lolcat comic ever, at last I found it again.
Tags: lolcats comic funny - Mel Gibson’s tirades are the distilled violence, cruelty, and bigotry of right-wing Catholic ideology – This is extraordinary. We live in a culture where the terms fascist and racist are thrown about, if anything, too easily and too frequently. Yet here is a man whose every word and deed is easily explicable once you know the single essential thing about him: He is a member of a fascist splinter group that believes it is the salvation of the Catholic Church.
Tags: celebrities racism fascism sexism religion catholicism - My Fault, I’m Female – Do you sometimes feel that you’re female, and it’s all your fault? MFIF (My fault, I’m female) is a blog that shares stories of women who’ve been made to feel it’s their fault that they are female at work, at home, or wherever. Basically it’s FML, but with sexist bosses, stone age attitudes, pay gap stories, and plenty of ranting.
Tags: sexism rant blog - Stuff You Will Hate: Scene Hair: Z0MG UR Doing It Wrong – “Origins” of “Scene” hair. Haha. <3
Tags: scene hairstyles dumb kindacool subculture - Black Power’s Gonna Get You Sucka: Right-Wing Paranoia and the Rhetoric of Modern Racism – “Prominent white conservatives are angry about racism. Forget all that talk about a post-racial society. They know better than to believe in such a thing, and they’re hopping mad. What is it that woke them up finally, after all these years of denial, during which they insisted that racism was a thing of the past?” Seriously AMAZING post.
Tags: usa racism rightwingbullshit - Revealed: brutal guide to punishing jailed youths | Society | The Observer – Published by the HM Prison Service in 2005 and classified as a restricted government document, the manual guides staff on what restraint and self-defence techniques are authorised for use on children as young as 12 in secure training centres. The centres are purpose-built facilities for young offenders up to the age of 17 and run by private firms under government contracts.
Instructions to staff warn that the techniques risk giving children a “fracture to the skull” and “temporary or permanent blindness caused by rupture to eyeball or detached retina”.
Tags: prison privatisation youthdetentioncentres youth children britain - ‘Hollywood Accounting’ Losing In The Courts – If you follow the entertainment business at all, you’re probably well aware of “Hollywood accounting,” whereby very, very, very few entertainment products are technically “profitable,” even as they earn studios millions of dollars. A couple months ago, the Planet Money folks did a great episode explaining how this works in very simple terms. The really, really, really simplified version is that Hollywood sets up a separate corporation for each movie with the intent that this corporation will take on losses. The studio then charges the “film corporation” a huge fee (which creates a large part of the “expense” that leads to the loss). The end result is that the studio still rakes in the cash, but for accounting purposes the film is a money “loser” — which matters quite a bit for anyone who is supposed to get a cut of any profits.
Tags: accounting economics profit hollywood filmmaking - RIAA Accounting: Why Even Major Label Musicians Rarely Make Money From Album Sales – “We recently had a fun post about Hollywood accounting, about how the movie industry makes sure even big hit movies “lose money” on paper. So how about the recording industry? Well, they’re pretty famous for doing something quite similar. Reader Jay pointed out in the comments an article from The Root that goes through who gets paid what for music sales, and the basic answer is not the musician. That report suggests that for every $1,000 sold, the average musician gets $23.40.” Good article, rounds up and quotes some other famous ones too.
Tags: musicindustry riaa economics marketing music accounting - 18th-Century Ship Found at Trade Center Site – On Tuesday morning, workers excavating the site of the underground vehicle security center for the future World Trade Center hit a row of sturdy, upright wood timbers, regularly spaced, sticking out of a briny gray muck flecked with oyster shells.
Obviously, these were more than just remnants of the wooden cribbing used in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to extend the shoreline of Manhattan Island ever farther into the Hudson River. (Lower Manhattan real estate was a precious commodity even then.)
Tags: archaeology history usa new york - Tory shock therapy for the NHS is an attack on democracy – “Coming alongside cuts, these [neoliberal] reforms mean that the NHS as a service free at the point of delivery, providing quality all-round care for all, is under serious attack. This is being promulgated alongside Michael Gove’s attempt to roll back a public, comprehensive, democratically accountable education system. This isn’t happening because of the deficit, it isn’t happening because people want it, least of all is it happening because of the result of the 2010 general election – please let us be spared that insult. It’s an attack on the welfare state, it’s an attack on the working class, and it’s an attack on democracy.”
Tags: NHS healthcare britain coalition tories classwar neoliberalism - Bill Hicks – a romantic out of time – “Kurt Cobain once called grunge the last wave of rock. Around the same time Bill Hicks became the first rock and roll comedian.”
Tags: comedy standup iconoclasts culture politics - All Tarkovsky Films Now Free Online – Thanks to the Film Annex, you can now watch the complete collection of Tarkovsky films online – for free. Each film is listed in our Free Movie collection, but here you can access each major film in the order in which they were made.
Tags: film andreitarkovsky free video stream - Britain Rolls Out Own Unmanned Killer Jet – “Tired of not having their own manless killer plane, Britain just rolled out the $216 million Taranis, a flying deathbot drone named after the Celtic god of thunder. Or misspelled dinosaur (Taranisaurus Rex).” Oh good, we need unmanned drones more than 2.5 million jobs.
Tags: war unmanneddrones weapons britain - My Flixel talk: demo, source code and a couple of other bits – Kerry’s resources for using Flixel.
Tags: flixel games coding design - ‘Populism’ and the mob – Literal expressions of contempt for the masses tend to stick in the public throat. People don’t like it. It works better as caricature and satire. In American pop culture, this is usually expressed in cartoon form. In The Simpsons, a constant mainstay is the hysterical, shrieking, irrational crowd, inflamed with murderous rage, galvanised by some moral panic or other. Pitchforks and flaming torches appear out of nowhere, looting begins spontaneously, anarchy in its basest form prevails. In South Park, they literally mutter “rabble, rabble, rabble” as they lead their charge, addressing hysterical demands to some political or corporate authority (who, however venal, comes across as a paragon of Enlightenment against the hateful mob).
Tags: populism democracy elitism popularculture usa capitalism - Boris Johnson and his innovative trial methodology – We expend a vast amount of money and effort on assessing children, without much evidence that this does them any good at all; but we make no attempt to cheaply and systematically assess the teaching profession’s various education methods, despite knowing for an absolute fact that this would bring incalculable benefits for every generation to follow. Instead we have Boris and some think tank wittering on about a “competition”: and everyone takes them seriously.
Tags: science stupid education britain - Captured: America in Color from 1939-1943 – These images, by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, are some of the only color photographs taken of the effects of the Depression on America’s rural and small town populations. The photographs are the property of the Library of Congress and were included in a 2006 exhibit Bound for Glory: America in Color.
Tags: photography history usa - Critical responses to my last relationship – “From the runner-up of our Short Story Award, comes the offbeat tale of a music critic and the band that made him change his tune.” Great short story.
Tags: fiction story music relationships - Dark Roasted Blend: Ekranoplans Showcase – They hover and skim above the water surface at speeds of up to 250 miles an hour, they carry heavier loads of cargo and troops than any airplane – the Ekranoplans, or “Wing-in-Ground” (WIG) vehicles are possibly the most exciting and strange looking technology ever designed by men. Developed mostly by Soviets during Cold Wars years (by Rostislav Alexeev’s design firm) some of them were over 500 feet in length and had an estimated weight of over 500 tons! And yet they skimmed over the waves with grace, at high speeds, able to negotiate stormy conditions, unseen by radar – all thanks to an aerodynamic principle known as the “ground effect”.
Tags: technology prototypes design military ussr transportation war aviation