jmoiron.net

Things have been pretty hectic at work recently, which kinda makes me cherish free time a little more. Work always seems to heat up right as I get enamored with a personal project of some sort. I know hiragana damn solid now, been reading comics to facilitate in trimming recognition time. This is just some stuff I was thinking about, falling under my favorite subjects: music & politics. And I guess, movies too.

Podcasts are the new Shoutcast are the new Napster are the new sliced bread. Since people are all the rage about Apple, and about the iPod (except in South Korea), it figures something that would combine "free" music and the latest fashionable bourgois accessory would spread pretty quickly. In the case of Podcasts (basically mp3 + rss), they're actually a good idea. Radio on demand means that less content needs to be provided, which in turn means that time and effort can be directed towards making quality content.

I found a few gems from startup podcast outfit 75minutes, thanks to a link from indietorrents: avante garde jazz artist John Zorn, whom I previously hadn't heard yet, and the Brazillian post-rockers Hurtmold. Hurtmold's website tried some interesting voodoo, so they wont get linked, but their sleek and jazzy groove on their latest album, "_Mestro_" should not be missed. The title of this post (which means "black rain" in portuguese) is one of my favorite tracks. If only I could stop reading "Hurmtold" when I look at their name. In any case, if you hunger for new artists, grab a few indie podcasts and head on over to your local record store (Tunes or Kims or whatever)!

And, on the subject of Africa and of movies, Kyle Smith of the New York Post wants you to know:

The documentary tries to pin Africa's suffering on capitalism, but dances around the real problem. Africa starves because corrupt governments own the natural resources and export them to buy weapons to keep their people at bay.

I suppose that on a review of documentary Darwin's Nightmare, it might be somewhat topical, to insert your own political dogma and hold in the same esteem your subject matter. Nobody's stopping you. But Smith's comment struck me quite oddly; nary did I blink an eyelash before the thought popped into my head: "Isn't that obvious?"

You'd think that, with a comment like Smith's, he is trying to gain influence in an overwhelmingly anti-capitalist audience, one which I don't think the New York Post has much of a mindshare in. But what's really interesting is that Smith doesn't realize the implications of his own statement; or at least, doesn't follow them through past a superficial good vs. bad analysis (which I'll admit would have been outside the scope of his movie review). His claim isn't backed up by his evidence in any non-semantic way.

People in Africa are suffering; is the immediate cause capitalism? Well, they have worse problems; namely the warlords and corrupt governments that Smith mentions, who stripmine material wealth and ship it off in exchange for weapons. Smith then misses the connection that stripping natural wealth for short term gain and making a sale indiscriminately of that sales impact (for the sake of, again, short term profits) are distinctly symptoms if not tenets of capitalism. Naomi Klein said, rather than Africa get its debt cancelled, to let Africa pay off its debt with its tremendous natural resources. Of course, it came along with a wink and a nudge and a hint hint that western corporations own most of them, and the rest lie in the hands of brutal administrations.

Conservatives (even if Smith is not one, but one could only assume that as a writer for the Post he is) love to blame people for things, rather than systems. Unless that system is poorly understood, in which case it can probably be safely equated with some other posterchild pre-hated system like communism, socialism, or nazism. Why is Africa in poverty? Bad leaders, apparently; not the European imperial system which decimated its people and stripped much of its wealth; not forced economic policies that result in African budgets going largely to pay off interest on debts; not systems that are in place to the detriment of Africa. The system is something set in stone; the rules are there, and if people are suffering its because someone is being bad, not because the rules allow and encourage the behavior that is causing the suffering to take place.

And quickly, I rounded out Bill Murray's "Meloncholy Trilogy" by watching Jaramusch's "_Broken Flowers_" this weekend. Together with "The Life Aquatic" and "Lost in Translation", this film pretty much rounds out the canon of intelligent, dry, deadpan and meloncholy humor that I have enjoyed over the past few years. Broken Flowers was the least movie-like film I have ever seen, but very satisfyingly so. I highly suggest catching it at one point, if you are a fan of the other titles I mentioned (and if you aren't, you probably have poor taste).