Kanye West - "Devil In A New Dress"
Leaked track from Kanye's new album "Dark Twisted Fantasy" in stores November 16th.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
The Beslan Massacre
The Beslan Massacre
It’s been six years since the Beslan Massacre – what some have referred to as Russia’s 9/11 – where over 1,000 men, women and children were taken hostage at a school for three days. In the end, nearly 400 of them were murdered, 156 of whom were children. The particular details of this atrocity have the power to silence me, so I’m going to step aside and make way for the words of once innocent children who have forever been scarred by Islam’s jihad.
Iranian student group releases anti-Israel computer games
Iranian student group releases anti-Israel computer games
A government-backed Iranian student group released two anti-Israeli computer games, “Devil Den 2” and “Freedom Convoy,” to commemorate the last Friday of Ramadan, referred to by Shi’ites as al-Quds Day.
Both games were produced by the School Students Basij Organization, which is affiliated with Iran’s Education Ministry.
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Devil Den 2 is about “the Israeli protocols,” the director of the organization, Muhammad Saleh Jokar, said during a ceremony announcing the release of the two games on Thursday, the eve of Quds Day.
“The illegitimate regime has said in its protocols that they will abolish all beliefs,” Jokar was quoted as saying by the Iranian Mehr News Agency.
“We have witnessed that the foundations of the illegitimate Zionist regime have been weakened and our younger generation must be familiarized with the protocols and the inhuman ideology of the regime,” he added.
The second game, Freedom Convoy, is based on the Israel Navy’s May 31 raid on the Mavi Marmara. Jokar described the maneuver, part of an Israeli effort to prevent ships from breaking the blockade of the Gaza Strip, as an Israeli attack, referring to the six foreign vessels as the “Freedom Flotilla.”
A number of Iranian military commanders, including Basij (volunteer forces) Commander Brig.-Gen. Muhammad Reza Naqdi and the deputy commander of the Armed Forces Headquarters, Masud Jazayeri, attended the ceremony.
“The downfall of oppressors is carried out by God...In the most pessimistic view, there will be no trace of the Zionist regime in 15 years,” Naqdi was quoted by Mehr as saying during the ceremony.
The “Zionist regime’s” place in history will be similar to those of the former Soviet regime and South Africa’s apartheid government, Naqdi added.
Jazayeri said that the games have been produced as an alternative for users who are being flooded with games manufactured by the US and Israel. He typified computer games as “soft weapons” – nonviolent measures used to change the population’s point of view – and said the US and Israel were using soft weapons against Iran alongside the “hard weapons” at their disposal.
According to the report, Iran plans to produce six additional sequels to “Devil Den.” The first installment in the series was released in 2009.
Many copies of the two new games were distributed free of charge to demonstrators participating in the al- Quds Day rally in Teheran.
Also at the rally, Iran’s military chief of staff said Teheran could strike Israel’s alleged nuclear facility if the Jewish state were to attack Iran’s nuclear sites.
Gen. Hasan Firouzabadi said Iran hopes there won’t “be a need to target the nuclear facility of the Zionist regime,” but if there is, Israel would receive “dreadful retribution.”
The rally is often used by Iranian officials to issue threats against Israel.
AP contributed to this report.
Artist and Producer Needed For Martial Law Album to be Distributed Through Island Def Jam/Vacant Lot Records
Artist and Producer Needed For Martial Law Album to be Distributed Through Island Def Jam/Vacant Lot Records
Vacant Lot Records, an independent New York record label who has worked with DMX, Jay Z, Mary J Blige, TI, Scarface, Silk The Shocker, Jadakiss and more, is looking for the hottest producer and artist (one of each) to feature on its Martial Law Album, distributed through Island Def Jam/Vacant Lot Records. At least one Sonicbids member is guaranteed to be featured.
The company is an emerging force in the Urban Music Industry. Singers, rappers and spoken word artists are welcome to submit as long as the submitted songs/beats are not typical. Dame Grease (founder of Vacant Lot who has also sold 35 million records) is looking for unusual tracks with creative twists.
Exposure for Martial Law will come from DJ networks, heavy radio campaigns, online, film, A&R and marketing professionals. Winners will be featured on the Martial Law album, in the media, physical copies and during public performances in selected areas. There will be online/physical distribution.
Martial Law will feature Dame Grease and other Major artists on his release. Formed in 1997, Dame Grease has accomplished major success in the Urban Market.
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Press Reviews
Dame Grease Preps Artwork For Upcoming Album "Martial Law"
SOUL PITCH STREET WIRE
If you Been Following the Wave Gang Movement and I Know You Have cause we Have our very Own JAY Z saying on a Drake Record that's he's the Owww man! and we all know Max B didn't create Owww but actually made it his signature. Then Jay Z should reach out to Vacant Lot And say that Owww over a Dame Grease Beat! Now that would be something to Oww about.. for more information
Artist of the Week - Dame Grease
BRM MAGAZINE
On a Harlem, NY avenue, sometime in the late ‘80s, a thirteen-year-old Damon Blackmon, now known as Dame Grease, would remark to his friends that, “You’ll notice the sun don’t shine on this side of the block.” Upon further introspection he would state “We gotta go to the rooftop; we don’t have to be here.”
DAME GREASE NEWS
BILLBOARD MAGAZINE
Dame Grease has collaborated with such prominent New York rap artists as DMX, the LOX, and Nas. He even took a chance producing the enigmatic Tricky, primarily recognized as a trip-hop producer. Following this courageous project, he formed his own label, Vacant Lot, and began work on his debut release, Live on Lenox Ave., in which he produced superstar ~ Jason Birchmeier, All Music Guide
Superbroke, Superfrugal, Superpower?
Superbroke, Superfrugal, Superpower?
In recent years, I have often said to European friends: So, you didn’t like a world of too much American power? See how you like a world of too little American power — because it is coming to a geopolitical theater near you. Yes, America has gone from being the supreme victor of World War II, with guns and butter for all, to one of two superpowers during the cold war, to the indispensable nation after winning the cold war, to “The Frugal Superpower” of today. Get used to it. That’s our new nickname. American pacifists need not worry any more about “wars of choice.” We’re not doing that again. We can’t afford to invade Grenada today.
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| Thomas L. Friedman |
Ever since the onset of the Great Recession of 2008, it has been clear that the nature of being a leader — political or corporate — was changing in America. During most of the post-World War II era, being a leader meant, on balance, giving things away to people. Today, and for the next decade at least, being a leader in America will mean, on balance, taking things away from people.
And there is simply no way that America’s leaders, as they have to take more things away from their own voters, are not going to look to save money on foreign policy and foreign wars. Foreign and defense policy is a lagging indicator. A lot of other things get cut first. But the cuts are coming — you can already hear the warnings from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. And a frugal American superpower is sure to have ripple effects around the globe.
“The Frugal Superpower: America’s Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era” is actually the title of a very timely new book by my tutor and friend Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins University foreign policy expert. “In 2008,” Mandelbaum notes, “all forms of government-supplied pensions and health care (including Medicaid) constituted about 4 percent of total American output.” At present rates, and with the baby boomers soon starting to draw on Social Security and Medicare, by 2050 “they will account for a full 18 percent of everything the United States produces.”
This — on top of all the costs of bailing ourselves out of this recession — “will fundamentally transform the public life of the United States and therefore the country’s foreign policy.” For the past seven decades, in both foreign affairs and domestic policy, our defining watchword was “more,” argues Mandelbaum. “The defining fact of foreign policy in the second decade of the 21st century and beyond will be ‘less.’ ”
When the world’s only superpower gets weighed down with this much debt — to itself and other nations — everyone will feel it. How? Hard to predict. But all I know is that the most unique and important feature of U.S. foreign policy over the last century has been the degree to which America’s diplomats and naval, air and ground forces provided global public goods — from open seas to open trade and from containment to counterterrorism — that benefited many others besides us. U.S. power has been the key force maintaining
global stability, and providing global governance, for the last 70 years. That role will not disappear, but it will almost certainly shrink.
Great powers have retrenched before: Britain for instance. But, as Mandelbaum notes, “When Britain could no longer provide global governance, the United States stepped in to replace it. No country now stands ready to replace the United States, so the loss to international peace and prosperity has the potential to be greater as America pulls back than when Britain did.”
After all, Europe is rich but wimpy. China is rich nationally but still dirt poor on a per capita basis and, therefore, will be compelled to remain focused inwardly and regionally. Russia, drunk on oil, can cause trouble but not project power. “Therefore, the world will be a more disorderly and dangerous place,” Mandelbaum predicts.
How to mitigate this trend? Mandelbaum argues for three things: First, we need to get ourselves back on a sustainable path to economic growth and reindustrialization, with whatever sacrifices, hard work and political consensus that requires. Second, we need to set priorities. We have enjoyed a century in which we could have, in foreign policy terms, both what is vital and what is desirable. For instance, I presume that with infinite men and money we can succeed in Afghanistan. But is it vital? I am sure it is desirable, but vital? Finally, we need to shore up our balance sheet and weaken that of our enemies, and the best way to do that in one move is with a much higher gasoline tax.
America is about to learn a very hard lesson: You can borrow your way to prosperity over the short run but not to geopolitical power over the long run. That requires a real and growing economic engine. And, for us, the short run is now over. There was a time when thinking seriously about American foreign policy did not require thinking seriously about economic policy. That time is also over.
An America in hock will have no hawks — or at least none that anyone will take seriously.
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