Rob’s notebook

WolframAlpha perhaps needs a little more work.

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 21:42:25 +0100

WolframAlpha perhaps needs a little more work.

"This guy’s like Gandhi, but better; he likes puppets. I love puppets. I love Fraggle Rock. I..."

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 03:39:00 +0100

“This guy’s like Gandhi, but better; he likes puppets. I love puppets. I love Fraggle Rock. I love Lamb Chop. I love Elmo, Sesame Street, Bert and Ernie, Snuffleupagus? Fucks my shit UP.”

- Dwayne the bartender

"They’ve got their little categories, like ‘conscious’ and ‘gangsta’...."

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:16:36 +0100

“They’ve got their little categories, like ‘conscious’ and ‘gangsta’. It used to be a thing where hip-hop was all together. Fresh Prince would be on tour with N.W.A. It wasn’t like, ‘You have got to like me in order for me to like you.’ That’s just some more white folks trying to think that all niggas are alike, and now it’s expanded. It used to be one type of nigga; now it’s two. There is so much more dimension to who we are. A monolith is a monolith, even if there’s two monoliths to choose from. I ain’t mad at Snoop. I’m not mad at Master P. I ain’t mad at the Hot Boys. I’m mad when that’s all I see. I would be mad if I looked up and all I saw on TV was me or Common or The Roots, because I know that ain’t the whole deal. The real joy is when you can kick it with everyone. That’s what hip-hop is all about. … They keep trying to slip the ‘conscious rapper’ thing on me. I come from Roosevelt Projects, man. The ghetto. I drank the same sugar water, ate hard candy. And they try to get me because I’m supposed to be more articulate, I’m supposed to be not like the other Negroes, to get me to say something against my brothers. I’m not going out like that, man.”

- Mos Def

“When Life Gives You Lemons…”

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 04:52:52 +0100

“When Life Gives You Lemons…”

The Roots feat. Common - Act too (Love of my life) “And it...

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 19:04:21 +0100

The Roots feat. Common - Act too (Love of my life)

“And it sounds so nice, hip-hop you the love of my life.”

Pete Rock Ft The Lords of The Underground - The Best Secret

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 18:15:03 +0100

Pete Rock Ft The Lords of The Underground - The Best Secret

"Throughout the rich world, government has simply got too big and Mr Cameron’s crew currently have..."

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 22:08:01 +0100

“Throughout the rich world, government has simply got too big and Mr Cameron’s crew currently have the most promising approach to trimming it.”

- The Economist, again. The cuts are necessary because “government has simply gotten too big”, they say. What a well-reasoned argument. I’m an anarchist at heart, so, generally, the smaller government the better. But the proposed cuts will wreck services and lives, strengthening private companies and the rich. Which The Economist sees as a worthwhile cause.

"Teachers and doctors (many of whom supported Mr Clegg) seldom welcome change."

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 21:51:47 +0100

“Teachers and doctors (many of whom supported Mr Clegg) seldom welcome change.”

- The Economist, brushing aside opposition to the cuts. Those doctors and teachers are just stuck in their ways, you see.

‘Surge’ smoke follows Petraeus to Afpak

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 13:49:49 +0100

‘Surge’ smoke follows Petraeus to Afpak:

Pepe Escobar:

The heart of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of Pashtuns in the south and southeast don’t want Karzai, don’t want Petraeus, don’t want surge, don’t want US and don’t want NATO. They want to be left alone to rule their local tribal land as they see fit. And to top it off, all those strands lumped as “Taliban” believe in their heart of hearts that their own brand of counter-surge is the real deal - that is, taking over Kabul by the end of 2012.

Petraeus’ cash diplomacy is doomed. The Taliban in all their strands, compared with Sunni Iraqis, are infinitely stronger, as much as Karzai is much weaker than Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. And even if only 30% of tribal Afghan Pashtuns actively support the Taliban, the majority totally supports their fierce anti-occupation struggle. The Washington notion that Petraeus can influence complex tribal Pashtun politics is risible.

If Petraeus goes “clear, hold and build” COIN in Pashtun lands he is doomed. If Petraeus gets restless and produces a Fallujah in Pashtun lands, he is also doomed (that may be in effect right away, as one of his minions told Fox News that rules of engagement will be more “kinetic” - code for more US firepower and more civilian casualties.)

So what’s the point of all this upcoming carnage? Well, there are so many - the poppy trade, the “Saudi Arabia of lithium”, the ultimate pipe dream known as Trans-Afghan Pipeline, those military bases spying both Russia and China … So many rats scurrying around the sinking US flotilla in the sand, but what the hell, there’s another successful “surge” to sell and the (war) show must go on.

(via Instapaper)

WikiLeaks has a problem going mainstream | Colin Horgan

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 13:13:00 +0100

WikiLeaks has a problem going mainstream | Colin Horgan:

For all the freedom that the internet grants users, we still ask that the kind of information in “collateral murder” be interpreted for us. That interpretation and contextualisation of the footage took place on a more traditional medium: TV news and opinion programmes. There it fell victim in the very system it tried to undermine. It became part of a homogeneous message of The Way Things Are.

The “collateral murder” video has been viewed almost 7m times on YouTube – that’s 128 times fewer than the video for Miley Cyrus’s Party in the USA. That comparison might seem silly, but it hints at a bigger problem. That is, the “collateral murder” video, as it became a part of the usual TV structure of message-advertisement-message, was reduced to an equivalent of all other parts of the usual pattern of disarticulation and abstraction of signs. In essence, “collateral murder” was overshadowed by a Miley Cyrus video because, in the end, it became part of a structure inherently designed to nullify its message by promoting the status quo of the culture industry.

(via Instapaper)

Tom Hazeldine: The North Atlantic Counsel

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 13:08:17 +0100

Tom Hazeldine: The North Atlantic Counsel:

A good, thorough piece about the how the International Crisis Group pushes for war.

Only a political and media mainstream complaisant about NATO adventurism could mistake Crisis Group for a muscular but essentially peace-loving NGO, as though it were the armed wing of Amnesty International.

(via Instapaper)

Blair's blood money

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 12:51:40 +0100

Blair's blood money:

ashleighlgray:

The advisory committee on business appointments, which vets jobs taken by former ministers, was pressured not to make public Blair’s “consultancy” deals with the Kuwaiti royal family and the South Korean oil giant UI Energy Corporation. He gets an estimated £2m a year for “advising” investment bank JPMorgan and undisclosed sums from other financial services companies. He makes millions from speeches, including reportedly £200,000 for one speech in China.

In his unpaid but expenses-rich role as “peace envoy” in the Middle East, Blair is in effect a voice of Israel, which has awarded him a $1m “peace prize.” In other words, his wealth has grown rapidly since he launched the bloodbath in Iraq with George W Bush.

"[New Colombian president] Santos comes to power on a wave of public support, taking 69% of the votes..."

Sat, 07 Aug 2010 17:16:24 +0100

“[New Colombian president] Santos comes to power on a wave of public support, taking 69% of the votes in the election.”

- Al-Jazeera, who didn’t mention that turnout was about 45%.

The Honduran Business Elite One Year After the Coup

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:37:20 +0100

The Honduran Business Elite One Year After the Coup:

Though this may seem like a return to the country’s violent past, Dr. Juan Almendares, the former rector of the country’s biggest university, says there is an important difference between the repression following the 2009 coup and the war against the Honduran people fought throughout the 1980s. “It’s important to understand that in the eighties the direct confrontation was more the political sector working together with army,” he said. “But today, the struggle is precisely about the neoliberal economic model, imperial globalization, and this whole campaign by financial capital to gain power over our lands, to take our resources.”

(via Instapaper)

New President-Elect, Same Old Story

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:36:44 +0100

New President-Elect, Same Old Story:

Former Colombian Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos was elected president with the votes of just 30 percent of all voters on the electoral rolls, while turnout stood at a mere 45 percent in this country caught up in a civil war since 1964.

It’d be interesting to see a demographic breakdown of those that voted.

(via Instapaper)

Torturers Lurking Behind Uniforms

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:36:41 +0100

Torturers Lurking Behind Uniforms:

IPS article on the widespread use of torture in Latin America, focusing mostly on Venezuela and Colombia. Utterly horrific.

(via Instapaper)

Mistah McChrystal — he dead

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:36:39 +0100

Mistah McChrystal — he dead:

Pepe Escobar spells out why the West are in Afghanistan:

So what’s “the mission” in AfPak? For the Obama team it’s rather to use Afghanistan as a pawn to expand the already abysmal fissure between the US and Iran, and to throw Shi’ite Iran and Sunni Wahhabi Saudi Arabia at each other’s throats.

But for the industrial-military complex it goes way beyond. It’s about the new great game in Eurasia. It’s about the Pentagon’s full “spectrum dominance doctrine”, which presupposes setting up strategic Afghan bases to control and survey strategic competitors Russia and China very close to their borders. It’s still about the late 1990s all over again; to isolate or crush or bribe the Taliban so the ultimate pipe-dream - the Trans-Afghan Pipeline (TAP) - can be built to carry Turkmen gas to Western markets, and not the rival, anathema IP (Iran-Pakistan) pipeline. In a nutshell, it’s about infinite war.

(via Instapaper)

All's fair in cuts and war | Terry Jones

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:36:33 +0100

All's fair in cuts and war | Terry Jones:

Did you notice there was one department that didn’t figure in the budget cuts?

Yes, it was the Ministry of Defence. Which is pretty surprising, since the UK spends more on its military than Russia. In fact, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, last year it was the world’s third biggest spender on military matters. We can be proud that our country, in 2009, a time of economic chaos, managed to spend $69bn on warfare – I’m sorry: “defence”.

Only China and the US spent more last year than us. Isn’t that something?

Now you may ask: “Who are our enemies, apart from those we’ve created by invading Iraq and Afghanistan?” After all, fundamentalist Islam wasn’t a problem before we started attacking Islamic countries – even secular Islamic countries like Saddam’s Iraq. Well the answer is: “We don’t know.”

(via Instapaper)

The asylum seekers who survive on £10 a week

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:35:22 +0100

The asylum seekers who survive on £10 a week:

“People think we should give asylum only to those who have a genuine need, not to those who have a so-called bogus claim,” she says. “But what people don’t understand is that the system is not fair. People don’t flee their country unless they have a very good reason for doing so, and it is difficult to prove what happened to you unless you have scars from torture up your arms. The fact that you failed in your asylum claim does not mean that you are not a genuine asylum seeker.”

(via Instapaper)

COLOMBIA: Future Holds More of the Same

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:35:20 +0100

COLOMBIA: Future Holds More of the Same:

Columnist William Ospina wrote that the elections represent merely a replacement of one caste — wealthy rural landowners, like Uribe’s family — by another — prominent urban families, like Santos’s.

What will undoubtedly be kept alive by Santos, according to Ospina, is Uribe’s “democratic security policy,” under which “the theft of land, forced displacement, espionage, killings with state weapons, subsidies to the privileged, and scandalous levels of poverty have prevailed.”

Colombia is one of the 13 countries in the world with the largest gaps between rich and poor, according to the Gini index, which measures income inequality.

Forty-six percent of the country’s 42 million people live below the poverty line, according to official figures.

(via Instapaper)