Diallo

In honor and memory of a victim of the American Dream.

REST IN PEACE.

Beat Down Borders Radio Rocking You Rocking You!!!!

Hey

I would like to give thanks and praise to Jah, Allah, Jesus, Buddah, Marx, Che, Marley, Strummer and any and all other Gods that looked out for me today. I just got a new job (!!!) and I am about to give my notice to my present (soon ex) job. On top of that my radio station is finally working!! I have a real internet connection now and I am in business. Enjoy the playlist, leave comments and ladies leave those #'s...ha!!!

life is pretty good..wait, let me grab a beer....

...no, life is now great!!!

ciao

Happy Birthday 'Nesta'

Ethiopia is the place to be right now (Has anyone ever said that before, probably not).

Leaving a quick note in memory and celebration of our generation's greatest artist Bob Marley.

There isn't much I can say to add any more insight to the millions of words written about Marley, but fuck it, I'll try anyways.

Marley's influence in music and culture is still being felt today and is as relevant as ever, no need to go into detail. I'm sure Bob would be happy about certain things if he were alive today and "vexed" about others. The greatest thing about Marley and his cultural legacy is this: Even though he held dogmatic views as per his religion, he always had a place in his heart for those of other cultures and nationalities, while at the same time he kept the people he saw as "his" closest to him.

Just a thought:

What a paradox life is. Those of us who are against imperialism in all its forms, usual revel in it's by products.

If it weren't for British Imperialism, and slavery if you think about it, there would of never been an African presence on the island of Jamaica. Without the African presence in Jamaica there would of never been, among many other things, Mento, Calypso, Ska, Rocksteady, Reggae etc. There never would of been a Bob Marley, and music, good music, as we now know it would of been changed forever. The same of course goes for the rest of the world.

Paradoxes intrigue me to no end, as they shed light on the random order of the universe.

Anyways, while we must never forget about Bob, Jamaican music is much more than he. Jacob Miller was an artist that was as popular or more so at the time of his tragic car accident. Reggae music could of had more than one icon but c'est le guerre. You can also feel Reggae's presence felt in the music being made by up and coming acts everywhere.

Dogma VS Culture

Dogmas have a profound effect on our daily lives. Everyone, at one time or another, falls into it's trap. It's our nature as human beings to do so. That being said, dogmatic thought- when used to answer a moral dilemma- can be dangerous to say the least.

The people who know me, know that I hate war more than anything else in this world. They and all others can deduce then that I am opposed to the war in Iraq. Many in the anti-war camp, now that Bush has been elected (I refused to use the term re-elected and I even use the term elected very loosely) along with the widely accepted view that the US troops are in Iraq to stay, have been focusing on the Iraqi elections as a opportunity to still register their dissent with Bush's and Blair's policies in Iraq.

I personally thought that the turnout would be very low because of all the violence and the fact that some Shi'ite parties were boycotting the election, not to mention all the Sunnis that would be as well. It appears now that the turnout was better than expected, and as expected Blair and Bush are using this to stroke their collective johnson.

This is how Dogma (on the left and on the right) fits in.

The righties (whoever you are out there) who upon seeing the initial reports of happy Arabs with purple fingers, this along with no reports of biblical , or Quranical (hey I just made up a word!!!) slaughtering of people trying to vote for the first time in their lives, must be thinking "See all those hippy fags were wrong. Sure all those coffins with American flags draped over them, and all that money spent just to find out there are no WMDs, and the torturing people thing was sucky in the beginning, but it was all worth it. We were right! Thank god, I almost begun to feel like questioning the media and government and I can't handle that shit right now."

....or something of that nature.....

The lefties, on the other hand, fell into the Schadenfreude trap. They wanted to see the bombs and deaths and tell everybody that would listen: "See, look this is Bush's freedom. This is what occupation is and this is why we should oppose it and get our troops home." That shameful joy never came to pass, well at least not yet.

The closest an article has come, that I have read, to highlight the Iraqi voters' bravery in going to the polls without using this as a retroactive approval for the occupation is this one. Imagine voting for the first time in 4 decades or at all or that matter, for a slate of candidates (who for the most part were anonymous until days before the election). That's amazing, even though you and your countrymen are at gunpoint from both sides in a senseless war, and given the fact that the date for this election and the decision not to postpone it was one made by Americans in DC and their buddies in Baghdad doesn't diminsh this accomplishment.

I happen to think electoral democracy a fetish and in the Iraq case the results wont affect much in the long run (and the similarities between this election and the election in Vietnam during it's war are scary) but I applaud the big fuck you the Iraqis gave to the criminal outsiders in their country wreaking havoc, be they Saudis, Syrians, Egyptians or Americans.

Hopefully some kind of civil structure will materialize out of this morass. A place where poets musicians and anyone can create, without the fear of death by beheading or a made in the USA evaporation by bombing. A place where women can wear a hijab or hardly anything at all. A place where young people can dance, drink, smoke and fuck and only have their overbearing parents to worry about instead of worrying about some religious police vigilante group or about breaking some arbitrary curfew and being caught by some overzealous American GI. At this point though, I don't see either side in the conflict offering a way out. Then again, I am not Iraqi and it's their call.

I don't know if I should be happy to have found this article or not. It's from a Pakistani newspaper called the Daily Times. I can't remember the last time I agreed with almost every point made in a editorial. The reason why I am so perturbed by this article and where it comes from is that I haven't found an equally profound article here in the US on the elections and it's possible ramifications for daily life for Iraqis. It shows me the sad state of the mainstream media here in a relatively free country vs. the press in very tightly controlled country like Pakistan. Enjoy.

As an aside:

Those of us who say were are against war need to ask ourselves, why?

I am against this and all other wars because there is never a justification for blowing up someone's mud hut in Afghanistan in the middle of the night just as there is no justification for plowing a plane load of people into a tower filled with more people during rush hour. The two acts are morally bankrupt.

The act of killing of millions of Jews, gypsies, Gays and whomever is equal in its brutality as the burning to death of 100,000 in Dresden and the 300,000 plus burned to a crisp in Nagasaki, Hiroshima and Tokyo. These acts reduce humans to, well I would say beasts but I can't seem to remember the last time any beast killed that many of its own.

Numbers are used to numb the mind.

Would you rather live next to a man who raped one woman or one that has raped 10? Well I'm sure your answer is neither. Why? Because the moral value of either choice is zero.

Once we start to rationalize one act of brutality against the other, we are falling into the trap of Dogma, of stale thought, of Schadenfreude, of shameful joy. Then culture dies a slow horrible death.

Hey

I am still alive and kicking. Stay tuned, I should have another piece ready soon on Dogma and Culture as it relates to the elections in Iraq.

To all in NYC:

Thursdays are still on at Bulgarian, all are welcome to come down and get crazy, but be forewarned, the management is not responsible about your drunk ass taking someone home you shouldn't have (long story).

Also Outernational is rocking this Friday and Saturday

DJ Hutz is getting drunk and stupid at Knitting Factory on Saturdays.

I am begining to feel like I need days off from my days off, fuck....

Also

Stay tuned for interviews w/ Outernational and Eugene Hutz from Gogol Bordello in the coming weeks as they work on Outernational's first single.

Oh yes and Beat Down Borders radio is still not up. My internet connection blows ass, but it's free. Wow I figured out a way to have the word ass and but follow each other in a sentence.

Ok it's way too late.


Sleep now....