darkmatter

‘The Message’ or at least a version of the rhythm track spills out of the Buick’s windows. From my vantage point the sound leaks through from the concerns of another age. I’m sat in the car parked next to it in an industrial lot. Remembering. People pissing on the stairs because they just don’t care. But the lyrics belonged to some other place, equally distant, vicariously sampled. The Buick itself whispers ‘old timer’ at upstarts in their hybrid imports. Young Turks with nervous smiles, never really sure what they’re laughing about except that when the laughter ends, the trouble begins.

If you surf the net you’ll eventually come across the buzz over the one laptop per child initiative. Simply put, it’s a scheme to make very low cost, open-source software based wireless laptops available to the children of the so-called ‘Third World’. Clearly, such a venture cannot alter core structural neo-liberal global inequalities, but should opening up technology to the economically improvished be welcomed?

Techno-utopianist Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the non-profit olpc, seemingly is aware of the limits of such a project. Even he admits it is not able to address basic issues of survival, such access to clean water.

Hip-Hop has emerged as a serious area of study in the US. This article in the San Francisco Chronicle - ACADEMIC HIP-HOP? YES, YES Y’ALL by Reyhan Harmanci gives a useful overview of the rise of Hip-Hop studies in the academy.

This is a short article on racism and mental health in The Guardian (2 April 2007). The author succinctly argues that the continuing high levels of psychotic illness in people of African and Caribbean origin in the UK is of epidemic proportions and asks why nothing is being done about it.

Stevie never said, ‘California, just like i pictured it’, so beyond Baywatch, the OC and one too many films, there’s not a whole lot to go on as LAX looms large in the after dinner sky. Virgin Atlantic, appropriately, securing its patch of quasi-virgin terrain. Waiting in line to be questioned, fingerprinted and processed, and not a Pakistani cricketer in sight. Mind you when you hail from a land where chapati flour is now synonymous with bomb factory in the minds of many, we’re all suspects in the eyes of the law, especially when it comes fully holstered and with an itchy trigger finger.

A list of essential cricket books to read while watching the World Cup:

C.L.R. James (2005)[1963] Beyond a Boundary, Yellow Jersey Press, New Ed. Press

Ashis Nandy (1990) The Tao of Cricket, Penguin Books

Mike Marquese (2005) Anyone But England: An Outsider Looks at English Cricket, Aurum Press

Michael Manley (2002) A History of West Indies Cricket, Andre Deutsch

Ramachandra Guha (2003) A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of a British Sport, Picador

Rahul Bhattarcharya (2005) Pundits from Pakistan: On tour with India, 2003-04, Picador

There are many glib pronouncements that we have entered into a ‘Big Brother State’. Rather then think of surveillance as a panopticon of disciplinary enclosure, it has penetrated the mobilities of everyday life - what Deleuze has named as societies of control.

The war on terror is increasingly materializing itself as a virtual power of super-surveillance. This short video animation entitled ‘Stop the Big Brother State’ succinctly highlights recent key transformations of neo-liberal democracies.

Celina De León highlights blogging as a racialized space in a recent article of USA located ColorLines - the national newsmagazine on race and politics

Is ‘adopting’ a ‘Third World’ baby the ultimate charitable act for white western superstar celebrities?

Madonna’s acquisition of a baby from Malawi appears to pale into insignificance in comparison to the enthusiasm of actress Angelina Jolie. She has adopted babies from Cambodia (2002), Ethiopia (2005), and has recently filed to adopt from Vietnam.

Well, finally Jolie’s dedication has been recognised in the film world…

For a more serious take on this issue, see the Celebrity Colonialism article

Professor Mahmood Mamdani makes a well argued critique of ‘humanitarian intervention’ and the continuation of the ‘civilising mission’ in Dafur in the LRB

In a recent talk at the the LSE it was interesting to see how many in the audience were antagonistic to Professor Mamdani’s argument about the continuation of bigotry under the cover of blasphemy in the West’s critique of Islam. There seemed to be very little space for the ‘middle ground’ that he was advocating. The response to the talk seemed to say a lot about the continual denial of bigotry, racism and eurocentrism in liberal western modernity - in left-liberal as well as right wing political positions and arguments.

‘Living Apart Together: British Muslims and the Paradox of
Multiculturalism’ [PDF file] - published by Policy Exchange

Has anyone read this recent report? It was quite high profile in the media. It might be useful to discuss further given that it represents one clearly articulated attempt to critique any form of multiculturalism and ‘politics of identity’ and defends some notion of shared ‘Britishness’- an increasingly problematic trend.