Tag: Politics
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Bradley Manning’s Day In Court
Today, after almost 18 months in solitary confinement, having been denied access to lawyers, to family, to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, and even having been denied clothes, Bradley Manning will for the first time face a judge. At his pre-trial hearing he will be formally charged with – among other things – “Aiding…
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Improvising Poetry and Our Digital Future
A couple days ago I posted a recording called Where The Bears Go by my duo The John Waynes (so named because it consists of John Sobol (me) and Wayne Kelso). Today I posted a second recording by The John Waynes called The Evil I. For those keeping score, Where The Bears Go is a…
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Franky Rousseau Large Band – Terrific Jazz By Any Other Name
Last week a friend sent me a link to this provocative blog post by famed jazz trumpet player, Nicholas Payton, who argues that jazz is dead. To me this isn’t news, since I wrote the same thing in a lengthy piece in Toronto’s eyeweekly back in 1992. And like Payton, who is being berated by…
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Phone Hacking and the Future of Privacy
I have been keeping tabs on the Leveson Inquiry in the UK, which continues to deliver the most astonishing insights into contemporary media culture and its effect on the lives of British citizens. Today’s testimony was perhaps the most remarkable yet, although its hard to measure degrees of amazement when almost every witness offers mind-boggling…
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Phone Hacking and Digital Culture
If you’ve spent any time watching the live feed provided by The Guardian you will surely agree that the Leveson Inquiry into British Press ethics, practices and culture is the most riveting public inquiry since Watergate. I mean, you’ve got the most famous, the most beautiful, the most tragic, the most scarred and the most…
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Gig at Casa Del Popolo in Montreal Sunday night
Hi all, just wanted to let any Montrealers reading this know that I am doing a show at the Casa del Popolo on St.Laurent tomorrow evening at 8pm as part of the Wired on Words series hosted by poetic comrade Ian Ferrier. Casa del Popolo is a terrific cafe that was expanded recently to include…
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Basketball Business as Black Revolution?
The National Basketball Association (NBA) is in trouble. The league locked out the players months ago, bargaining has failed, and now the players have disbanded their union and are taking the league to court to contest the most basic notions of player-league business relations. Things like player drafts and even the notion of ‘owning a…
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Put an End to Terminal Thinking
Until we understand that stories are beginnings and not ends we will be ruled by Terminal Thinking. (When a story is seen as an end and not a beginning, that is Terminal Thinking.) Until media is made to be transmitted through the many to many, and to be changed in transmission from each to each,…
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Free Bradley Manning!
Just a reminder that this courageous boy has been held in solitary confinement for over 8 months without charge by Obama’s government and against the Geneva Convention, without the right to meet with a lawyer in private, and without clothes for much of that time. Why? For showing the world what democracy looks like. Free…
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Occupy The Internet!
The OWS movement keeps growing. More and more people keep celebrating resistance, protesting against corporate greed, getting arrested, speechifying, and making excellent media. Yesterday some Egyptians who had been involved in the Tahrir Square revolution put in an appearance and further stoked the flames of inspiration. Huzzah! Yet I worry. For all their energy, the…
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