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Rod Poole
How terrible to learn of the stabbing death of Rod Poole, the great experimental guitarist. The culprits are in custody. A tribute from Nels Cline is here. A long clip from the Acoustic Guitar Trio record (Poole/Cline/McCauley) is here. More info on the crime here.
Electro-Music ’07
My preview of this year’s Electro-Music Festival (Cheltenham, PA), in today’s Inquirer.
Torture, continued
A commenter going by “napoleon15” took me to task the other day for this post, one of many in which I’ve denounced the Bush administration’s pro-torture policy. “What the US does to al-Qaida war criminals doesn’t even begin to compare to what the Nazis and others have done,” wrote my respondent. Andrew Sullivan has unearthed a document describing Verschärfte Vernehmung,
Music highlights
Leni Stern, Alu Maye (Have You Heard) — An interesting five-track EP recorded in Mali in 2006. Features remarkable playing by the late Michael Brecker, in an eclectic, African-influenced pop context. Given Brecker’s death some months later, the tribute to Don Alias is almost eerie.Randy Napoleon, Between Friends (Anzic) — About a month ago I heard the impressive vocalist Sachal
Moore’s Cuba, continued
A follow-up to my post of May 13, on Michael Moore’s new film “Sicko” and his take on health care in Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Anthony DePalma has an interesting piece about life expectancy rates in Cuba and the U.S. He quotes a Dr. Robert N. Butler: “I know Americans tend to be skeptical,” [Butler] said, “but health and education are
The horror continues
Nir Rosen’s NY Times Magazine article last week [$], on the Iraqi refugee crisis, shed some light specifically on the plight of Palestinians living in Iraq: Hussein was first threatened in 2005, when, he said, a letter containing a bullet and two drops of blood was sent to his house. ”If you do not leave Iraq, this will be your
No friends but the mountains, and…
I have great regard for the Kurds of northern Iraq (go here to read my Turkey-Iraq travelogue from last year). For a long time, the Kurdish authorities have been forced to grab support wherever they can get it — from Iran and Israel, for instance, in different circumstances and for different reasons. You’ve heard it before: politics makes for strange
The spirit of Falwell, abroad
A story here, about the jailing and intimidation of an Indian artist over supposed “obscenity.” I wrote some days ago about the Richard Gere story, and the deluded opinion that Gere needed to show more respect to “Indian culture” — as if the priorities of the ultraright Hindu faction Shiv Sena represent Indian culture as a whole. In the present