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Activist Times Inc. Issue 318
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.318.
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Channel surfing some yesterday, I ended up on VH-1.
I probably watched the last 2/3 of a show about Milli
Vanilli getting caught lip-sinc'ing.
"Girl, you know it's (not) true."
I won't even go NEAR Hitler's "big lie" and any current
parallels. But I should bring up something else about the
music industry. When Milli Vanilli got caught there was
outrage. Why? Because there was a belief that no one does
that. There was a certain purity perceived. What happened
when Britney got caught? She argued, she stood up and fought
for herself. If she wants to do that, she can. No one's going
to stop her, and no one's going to call her less of a rock
star for it. She stayed ontop. There is no longer any outrage
is there? Everyone seems to do it at some or all of their shows
now, huh? There's no easy way to tell if someone you see on a
television screen is lip-sinc'ing is there?
[ http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=179567 ]
But there's something much worse.
Memorize the lyrics to your favorite song. Sing them into
your computer in something -- anything that resembles the right
rhythm and meter. Just get it close. Anunciate every word right.
Don't worry about pitch, don't worry about much really, just get
it onto a .wav or an .mp3 and get it to me.
Using just cool edit and sound forge I WILL GIVE YOU A MUSIC
MAKEOVER THAT WILL MAKE YOUR HEAD SPIN.
"Who is that. Is that me???"
You betcha. Pitch, tone, volume, there's almost nothing that
cannot be fixed now. In fact, we can build all that in a petry
dish. You don't have to bring a single thing with you musically
anymore.
If you have perfect breasts, or washboard abs, no one is going
to care. In fact, it'll serve the industry much better (how come
whenever I see the word "industry" next to the word "music" I
think Hormel??) if you don't bring any music with you. None at
all. Your voice won't need to be perfect. It needs to be
PERFECTIBLE.
That is all. They can do the rest, and they'd prefer to.
First look at Shakira. If you've ever heard her spanish music
before any US corporations got ahold of her you'd know she can
sing. She sings really well. She has a voice like no other.
LIKE NO OTHER.
No one sounds like her, and she sounds like no one else. And
she used to bring that to her songs when she interpreted moods,
and put music to melodies and rhythms in a way that made all
your neck hair stand on end.
Now, what. "Underneath Your Cloths."
Who wrote it? Does it matter anymore? I don't even want to
find out, really. The last time I went hunting for who wrote
a song it was either a Britney song or a Christina song, and
it was co-written with 9 middle aged white men. How do ten
people set about co-writing a song anyhow??? Do they each
push down one note on a piano, while the others build a chord?
But I digress.
Is there a sub-reason Shakira's "crossover album" is titled
"Laundry Service?" Are there Mafiosos in Putumayo, Colombia
and Houston, Texas laughing at all the rest of us? Especially
when we pay $14 for it new?
And last up, I'd better pick on Grammy-Nominated Craig David.
Maybe he's talented maybe not. He's been "Grammy-Nominated"
since before I'd ever heard of him. It seems he was born
Grammy-Nominated. I doubt we'll ever know. At least with
Shakira I knew how much talent she came up with, despite
all that.
What can I say? He's certainly not the first to do it,
but he's letting them do it to his voice more than I've
heard from anyone else so far. And you're going to laugh
but truth be told, I've taken apart about a dozen hit
songs this last year, and analyzed them. The ONLY (you
heard right, the only) song that didn't have any pitch
shifting was a Britney Spears song. She sings her own
music??? How novel. The pitch fixer. Are you even aware
it exists anymore? When Cher did it, did it bug you?
At all???
It certainly bothered me. Not because of Cher, but what
it indicated to me for the future of the music world. I
asked myself right then, what if people get used to this?
If we all put up with it?
Craig David.
Need I say more? It seems they've fixed more than half
his notes. Will we ever know? Will it matter? It's a small
lie compared to the bigger ones all around him, huh? All
around us really.
Will we spend our entire life in denial?
#s
http://newyorker.com/talk/content/?020513ta_talk_mcnamer
http://dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=21559
http://www.leftcurve.com/LC24WebPages/artrat.html
http://members.ams.chello.nl/jsteenis
http://www.wave.coop/info/links.html
http://www.notowar.com/media.html
http://www.holt.org/images/koko
http://www.globalresearch.ca
http://www.newworldpeace.com
http://nymphs.org/~bobcat
http://www.dyne.org
http://www.snowshoefilms.com
http://www.holt.org/kokopelli
http://www.thewoodstockspirit.org
http://www.turner.com/planet/static
http://www.hardtimes.com/recipes.htm
http://www.webmaster.crevier.org/beatles
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print.php?sid=6375
http://artists2.iuma.com/IUMA/Bands/Shiitake_Mushrooms
http://madison.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=4584
ASK A ROUGH QUESTION?
How come when a friend of mine sent me notice about
Patch Adams coming to lecture, I quickly received a
spam at my ISP's email address from Patches, a colorful
clown who's going to tell me all about quitting smoking
if I'll only send them some nominal amount of cash?
And how come when I wrote something unfavorable about
Pfizer corporation including how they lobbied so hard
for "fast-trac" which excludes product testing so now
they can put narcotics like viagra, norvasc, zoloft, and
zithromax right onto the market, whether they're safe or
not. Woops - run-on sentence again - how come minutes later
I get no less than five (count them 5) spams in my ISP's
email inbox about how I can buy all the viagra I want
online without even having a prescription?
NEWSWATCH
More Newspaper Consolidation
a local update by Kristian Knutsen.
(reprinted from Insurgent newspaper)
I'm typing this in from a newspaper I just read because I
find it very important to the grand scheme of things. I'll
include this as a newswire article while I prepare it as
a feature story too I think.
-30-#marco#-30-
In February, Lee Enterprises Inc., an Iowa-based newspaper
chain with a 50% interest in MNI (Madison Newspapers, Inc.)
announced a $694M deal to acquire Howard Publishing, Inc.,
a newspaper chain with 16 dailies nationwide, from New York
to California. MNI is publisher of The Capital Times and
The Wisconsin State Journal.
When the two Madions dailies formed MNI, Lee, the owner of
State Journal, became half owner of MNI, sharing control with
the Capital Times Company. Currently, MNI contracts with Lee
for State Journal editorial content, while The Capitol Times
Co. is contracted for Times editorial content.
With this addition, Lee will have a 1.1 million and 1.2 mil
daily and Sunday circulation, respectively, and will be the
twelfth largest newspaper chain in the US.
While the issue of media consolidation is usually associated
with global behemoths like AOL Time Warner, Vivendi Universal
or News Corp., the newspaper industry has also experienced an
ongoing wave of acquisition, consolidation and "downsizing."
Ranging from giants such as Gannett (owner of USA Today and
numerous papers across Wisconsin), Knight-Ridder, Times Mirror,
and Tribune, to smaller players like Lee, the newspaper industry
is dominated by growing chains. Many dailies have disappeared
because of this consolidation.
Often when company gains ownership of more than one paper
in a city, it wil close one. In the last decade, the Lincoln
Journal (one of Lee's cuts), Anchorage Times, Shreveport Journal,
Tulsa Tribune, Pittsburgh Press, El Paso Herald-Post, and
Nashville Banner have all disappeared.
http://www.webactive.com/webactive/cspin/cspin980703.html
[A realaudio interview with Richard McCord, discussing
his book, The Chain Gang: One Newspaper Vs. The Gannett
Empire.]
http://www.shepherd-express.com/shepherd/19/12/news_and_views/media_musings.html
[Dave Berkman column about "anti-trust violations, breach
of contract, extermination campaigns, deceit, bribes, lies,
threats, under-the-table deals, circulation scams, broken
promises--anything that would make a buck..."]
http://www.sfaol.com/mccord/mccord.html
[other McCord articles in Santa Fe Always Online]
http://www.greenbaynewschron.com/history
[historical account of a small paper refusing to become
Gannett-victimized with the "Chain Gang" story centered
in its context.]
ATI - No longer abusing puts and calls since 1991
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ALIA'S STORY: DETAINED IN MILWAUKEE AND LATE TO A-20
Most of what follows is transcript of an interview Alia Kate
gave to my friend Brian Long and his co-producer Stokely Baksh
near a Taco Bell in Dupont Circle, Washington, DC., after she
and her travelling companions were detained at Milwaukee's
Mitchell International Airport on their way to joining us for
a weekend of protests, rallies and demonstrations.
It was disturbing to hear that night that most of the group
hadn't made it, wasn't allowed to leave the ground, that they
had been put on a "no fly" list, and that there was only a
possibility they could try again the next day. That morning
they made it on, but that caused them to miss all the morning
marches, and instead they would meet up with us at a rally at
the National Mall later that day.
I could recount the rest of this story, but Alia's video
interview tells all this much better than I could.
As soon as we got to the airport we all went to check in.
As soon as they got our names they said the computer was locked.
The sheriff came and the first thing she said was grab your bags
and follow me, we have to do some further questioning.
I found out I was the second person that happened to. There was
a database of names that the FBI or Air Marshalls had compiled and
that my name or another name had been linked to a terrorist.
So I went to an office for about 20 minutes. Three or four Sherrifs
asked me questions. If I was from Milwaukee, if I lived here my whole
life, what my nationality was. It turned out that I was part Iranian.
They asked if it was my mother or father who was Iranian, when he came
here, if he was a citizen, if I travelled anywhere outside the United
States before.
I've been to a lot of places, then they just told me that there was
this guy who had been arrested and he was Indonesian and linked with
Al Qaeda, and he was a bomb maker or something like that, so they were
on extra alert. They also told me that only about four people a day
are usually procedurally stopped. So after they made phone calls and
checked with immigration to make sure I wasn't who they suspected. I
had to have my bag screened extra, I had to go through a hand check
of all my bags, then a special metal detector.
I guess that was only the start of it because when the rest of our
group came in about 20 more were flagged, and those were people varying
from college students, high school students, nuns and priests were
stopped. It appeared to have no order. The first thing that went through
my mind was maybe it was because of my nationality. Because my name sounds
a little Arabic; I don't know. As soon as people started getting grouped
together then there were 20 of us, we started to wonder exactly what was
going on.
We didn't find out until later, they said they were holding us indefinitely
until they could process us all through immigration. Meanwhile our plane left.
Midwest did all they could but it was someone higher up than Midwest that gave
the order.
HOW LONG WERE YOU AT THE AIRPORT?
We were at the airport from around 4:45 pm til about 9:30. One
of us called every single major network in the city. By the time our plane
was about to leave all of us had been processed but they still said no, we
couldn't get on.
DO YOU HAVE ANY SORT OF A CRIMINAL RECORD THAT WOULD LEAD
ANYONE TO BELIEVE THAT YOU WERE A DANGEROUS TERRORIST?
[laughs]
No criminal record. Only thing I'm guilty of is being a peace activist.
WHAT GROUP ARE YOU WITH?
Peace Action Wisconsin. One of the sherrifs said early on
that the reason we were flagged was probably because we were
going to Washington to rally and lobby.
WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WHEN YOU GET BACK?
We're going in on Monday to lobby our senators here about Plan
Colombia and we're also going to consequently mention what
happened at the airport. We'll go back and do followups with
all the news stations, letters to the editors, get the word
out as much as possible.
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT THE CRIMINALISATION OF DISSENT AND
THE INCREASING EQUATING OF ACTIVISM WITH TERRORISM IN THE WAKE
OF SEPTEMBER 11?
I think it's absolutely rediculous. They have us flagged out for
being some kind of dissident terrorist organization, and in fact
we're coming out here to protest those things. And we're coming
out here to participate in the democratic process of lobbying our
congress and there they are stopping our democratic rights,
they're violating our rights.
IS THIS THE FIRST TIME YOU'VE FLOWN SINCE SEPTEMBER 11TH?
Yes. I was no where near expecting any of this to happen.
SO YOU'RE THINKING OF CHANGING ANY PLANS?
Actually I'm coming back here again soon.
HAVE FUN
It'll be interesting.
[ref]=[http://www.progressive.org/webex/wxmc042702.html]
[ref]=[http://dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=21891]
[ref]=[http://mke.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=278]
Well, that's about it for 318, huh?
Send good stuff to ati@etext.org
Bad stuff to primeanarchist@thepentagon.com
The Zine's semi-official website is at:
http://www.thepentagon.com/primeanarchist
http://www.thepentagon.com/schoolofamericas
or
http://www.thepentagon.com/soa
for all things reconsidered.
Oh, and if you've got sense, you'll dial
1-860-887-2600 extention 5293
