Web review-highlights, Nov./09

the web and blogosphere highlights column



STUDENTS

The blog CampusConservativeWatch is a good place to find the latest leads on the tactics of the Conservatives and others in the attempt to destroy the Canadian Federation of Students. At the moment. It links to another post on Canadian Dimension magazine, about the situation in Manitoba. It lists members of the campus conservatives showing that many on the list have repeatedly ran for president of the student union, like a battering ram on a door. That's a good illustration of a co-relation. Heres a quick link

If you look at the bottom of the CampusConservativeWatch post you'll find comments that are crude and whiny. You know: CFS is the twin of the NDP, That Progressive Students4CFS is a Marxist group (like that's a bad thing),that it is a Stalinist group, that it is sneaky, and in addition to the usual red baiting, charges that it is anti-Semitic. Get a load of that! Sounds like Tory talk right? Hardly constructive debate, it's a trap for the left to end up not talking about the issues of the student movement and becoming more isolated.

ART

Imagine being part of a group that builds a hidden underground complex with cinema, bar and restaurant. Well, imagine no more as this is reality in Paris, France. a group les UX has been a boon to the arts but a focus of the police there. They make world headlines in 2007 when they were brought to trial for repairing the Pantheon clock. Now that's Guerrilla art!
group's link 1 2


POLITICS IN OTTAWA

So do you know how you're MP votes? Maybe not because it's such a pain to find out. Well this website makes it just a little easier to see how you're Member of Parliament vote on those burning issues.

RADIO AND MUSIC


Ever read old comic books, and old issues of magazines like Popular Mechanics?
You might have come across ads for poems-wanted. Well there is an end product and they have a genre song-poems. And apparently, people collect these. Here is a website that features song-poems and what I find of most interest is how the industry works. Check out the section that titled "a Series of Deceptions". That's Capitalism.

what is this "song-poem"?

DJ SPOOKY discusses globalization.

DJ Spooky, that subliminal kid, released a new album and DVD entitled

the secret song. It takes elements that are far and wide ranging from Adam Smith to the October Revolution. The Wall Street Journal did a quick blurb about the album, focusing on quotes from The Wealth of Nations read in Mandarin which is featured on one track. The blurb in the paper sounded happy that American ideals had moved to China. I'm not too sure that wall street's take on this is Globalization, but more Cultural Imperialism. Are they one and the same or are they different creatures? Globalization can be more organic and democratic than that. But that debate is new and is still to be played out. The secret song is more than that, after all perhaps China has influenced the west in ways we have not yet realized?

Of course there are many other facets that the website talks about: Global financial meltdown, socialism in Russia, struggles in Iran, technology (example: the iPod).

It's not a political lecture in the traditional sense, it's music, it's art. And as art it does it's job well: to explore, explain, to make a statement, to make one think. Maybe globalization can be a people's movement after all?

that subliminal link including music samples and video.




CO-OP

and since this section deals with radio here's this month link: to CO-OP radio's website