The Largest Minority

July 9th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

June 24th, 2009 by eejipshuness

The soulful Bill Withers was born in the unfortunately named city of Slab Fork, West Virginia in 1938. He is the youngest of 6 children, his father died when he was only 13, and he served in the US Navy for almost a decade before starting a career in music. He was almost immediately successful in the music industry, earning his first Grammy within 2 years of his demo audit with Clarence Avant of Sussex Records. Booker T. Jones (also of Sussex Records) produced his first album, which featured the chart-topping hit, “Aint No Sunshine”.

“Aint No Sunshine” alone has been covered by over 100 established artists, including Al Green, BB King, Lenny Kravitz, Michael Jackson, Otis Redding, The Police, The Temptations, and, you guessed it, Akon. “Use Me” has also been covered by some popular people like D’Angelo and Isaac Hayes, but I mostly picked it because it’s pretty awesome (especially on headphones) and Chico Brenes skated to it. (That’s how my boyfriend found it for me.)

Some other popular songs by Mr. Soul — I mean Withers — are “Lovely Day”, “Lean on Me”, “Just the Two of Us”, and “Grandma’s Hands” (which was sampled in the legendary old school hit “No Diggity” by Blackstreet).

In conclusion, Bill Withers is the shit.

June 21st, 2009 by Manila Ryce

When you combine two legends in their respective genres - Communist rapper Boots Riley and anarchist guitarist Tom Morello - you’ve got a dangerous mixture of passion and creativity poised to reclaim American youth culture from the bourgeois entertainment industry and their one dimensional focus group creations. Get Breckin Meyer to play the antagonist for your video and things are guaranteed to get awesomely weird.

After following up his role in Rage Against the Machine with the more mellow Audioslave and a subsequent solo career, Morello once again takes up his beloved role in Street Sweeper as the front and center DJ who uses a guitar rather than turntables. To compliment that foundation, Boots delivers the ammunition like only a genuine rapper who’s perfected his craft can, spitting thoughtfully condensed imagery with every line.

This is the soundtrack of the revolution. Bump it loud enough for the walls of capitalism to come crashing down (lyrics available below the fold).
Read the rest of this entry »

March 22nd, 2009 by Manila Ryce

If you believe that American voters with their heads still floating high in the hopesphere can be affected by facts, then you might regard this story as another sobering moment. Obama vowed that his administration would fight hard for working people despite the troubling fact that far too many officials in his administration have vested private interests in the matters they were assigned to address.

Validating fears that they will be puppets of the “Big 4″ record companies, the administration has intervened to support the RIAA’s position that it’s okay to award statutory damages from 2,100 to 425,000 the actual damages to big corporations. We don’t have a government in America, only a coalition of giant corporations.

The Obama Administration’s Department of Justice, with former RIAA lawyers occupying the 2nd and 3rd highest positions in the department, has shown its colors, intervening on behalf of the RIAA in the case against a Boston University graduate student, SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, accused of file sharing when he was 17 years old. Its oversized, 39-page brief (PDF) relies upon a United States Supreme Court decision from 1919 which upheld a statutory damages award, in a case involving overpriced railway tickets, equal to 116 times the actual damages sustained, and a 2007 Circuit Court decision which held that the 1919 decision — rather than the Supreme Court’s more recent decisions involving punitive damages — was applicable to an award against a Karaoke CD distributor for 44 times the actual damages. Of course none of the cited cases dealt with the ratios sought by the RIAA: 2,100 to 425,000 times the actual damages for an MP3 file. Interestingly, the Government brief asked the Judge not to rule on the issue at this time, but to wait until after a trial. Also interestingly, although the brief sought to rebut, one by one, each argument that had been made by the defendant in his brief, it totally ignored all of the authorities and arguments that had been made by the Free Software Foundation in its brief. Commentators had been fearing that the Obama/Biden administration would be tools of the RIAA; does this filing confirm those fears?

source

February 15th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

I’ve recently put the art pieces from our “Valentines for Palestine” art exhibit up on Ebay. The pieces are up for “adoption” so that they can be sent to Gaza City where they will be put on public display for the general public. Click on the image above to view them. It’s best to bid now and help drive the auction prices up while there’s still more than a week to go. Proceeds from the winning bids will also go towards humanitarian aid in Gaza.

January 17th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Amazing. Spoken word poet Tahani Salah performs “Hate” at the Urban Word NYC 2006 Teen Poetry Slam.

June 15th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

One of my favorites. Check out another poem by Shihan titled “The Auction Network“

May 15th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

Scottish artist Jane Frere discusses in length her inspiration and reason for creating the Nakba Project here.
h/t Return of the Soul