Egypt: Another Leaderless Revolution Succeeds!

© Demotix / Autopauta
http://www.flickr.com/photos/amnesty-international/

After 18 days of protests, the most well-funded US-backed dictatorship has fallen and the people of Egypt, like their friends in Tunisia, are victorious. In this beautiful moment, Egyptians can also revel in the fact that their revolution, as in Tunisia, was one truly by and of the people. There was no political party leading the charge, no revolutionary vanguard agitating the masses and seizing power, and no charismatic politicians at the head of the crowd. In fact, the revolution was led by the thousands and sometimes millions of people in the streets who became actors in history over the past weeks.

The bottom-up nature of the protests in Egypt has been widely remarked in the international and US media, with reactions ranging from dismay to fascination. While much of the spotlight in the West tends to focus on the role of Twitter and Facebook, these were secondary to the people who were using them as some tools among many to overcome the Mubarak regime. The protests in Egypt were distinctly anarchist and anti-hierarchical in form, if not always in demand, as highlighted below:

- spontaneous protest with little or no planning
- acts of property destruction (police stations and party headquarters) were spontaneous and carried out en masse
- spontaneous strikes and resistance by workers in the last week of protests
- self-organization of protests and neighborhood defense
- women as leaders and protesters
- open discussions and consensus decision making about how to bring the regime down, what a new society would look like, etc. in Tahrir Square
- mutual aid - everything from Christians protecting Muslims from government thugs during prayer to sharing of food and knowledge in Tahrir Square
- the lack of any spokesperson, party or centralized leadership

This is a very exciting time in world history, and the meme of ‘leaderless revolution’ is now much more present within the consciousness of US media and political culture, a plus for those waging anti-hierarchical struggles here. What the future holds for Egypt is hard to tell at this point. A great battle has been won, but with the US-backed military in control declaring that they will for the time being maintain the crony government arranged by Mubarak protesters have vowed to defend the revolution.

In the words of Alice Cooper, stay hungry, Egypt!

Egyptian and Tunisian Revolts and the Limits of Nationalism

Among all the amazing events occurring in Tunisia, Egypt, and across the Middle East and North Africa, one of the most recurrent pictures has been massive crowds of people waving and even wearing national flags. News coverage has stressed that people from "all walks of life" have come out to protest the decrepit and failing dictatorships as they cling to power, and indeed it seems to be the case that entire countries have entered into revolt against these governments. Yet among the momentous events in recent weeks, there have been reminders that these riots are about more than overthrowing dictatorships and gaining political representation.

Within the battles against repressive governments, a class war has been unleashed. While protests continue to rage in Tunisia, shopkeepers are fighting against protesters in defense of the transitional government. In Egypt, the poor and dispossessed are looting wealthier areas. It is especially notable in Egypt, where the fearful specter of the mob has been conjured by both US media and Al Jazeera, that we see comments like this emerging:

“These big guys are stealing all the money,” said Mohamed Ibraham, a 24-year-old textile worker standing at his second job as a fruit peddler in a hard-pressed neighborhood called Dar-al-Salam. “If they were giving us our rights, why would we protest? People are desperate.”

He had little sympathy for those frightened by the specter of looting. He complained that he could barely afford his rent and said the police routinely humiliated him by shaking him down for money, overturning his cart or stealing his fruit. “And then we hear about how these big guys all have these new boats and the 100,000 pound villas. They are building housing, but not for us — for those people up high.”

In a massive protest against a dictatorship, just as everywhere else, class matters. "The Egyptian people" and "the Tunisian people" are not a single unit, and in both of these countries there are serious disparities in wealth (although not as serious as in the United States...). At the end of the day, will it be the "big guys" who take power again? Let's hope not.

Non-profiting off of our souls

Life goes on in Washington, D.C.

I am once again employed, albeit far from "gainfully", at a call center in the city. All of my distaste and anger at the nonprofit industrial complex has been affirmed once again, making this the third nonprofit job I've worked since graduation that has been exploitative of the people who worked there and acted at best as a band-aid solution to a deep, systemic problem. This is also my second nonprofit job (almost my third) where the pay has been low and the benefits poor (in this case, nonexistent).

The domination of the job market of young college students and graduates by low/no-pay and no-benefit positions isn't a secret - consider the recent article run on the New York Times about the growing concern about internships. Unfortunately, this article is focused on the private sector and the scandal of a "for-profit employer" hiring unpaid workers. Where is the outcry about unpaid or low-paid labor in nonprofits? While I'm not holding my breath for the NYT to break the story, the reality is that the nonprofit field is full of low-paying entry-level jobs (or unpaid internship positions) that take advantage of well-meaning, socially-concerned generally young people.

At this point you may be wringing your hands and muttering to someone else in the room (or no-one in particular) about how nonprofits are strapped for cash and really can't afford to pay people all that much. It's true that many nonprofits don't have all that much money - they're generally running off of grants, dues and private donations, none of which are guaranteed and all of which are subject to change from year to year. The big problem, though, is that nonprofits tend to divide up the money they do get in really bad ways. Because they're usually top-down, the executive director tends to take a huge cut of the money coming into the company, leaving less to work with when it comes to the actual work and the people doing it. I work in a nonprofit where the ED gets almost 200 thousand dollars in pay and benefits - meanwhile people staffing the phones are getting a meager 9 or 10 an hour. Even at my last job, when I was pulling in around 32K for a year's work, my boss was making much more (at the same time lecturing me about how we needed to hold off on spending money on the organizing I was doing).

In order to truly remedy this problem, we need to destroy nonprofits themselves and create/grow fresh, vital forms of creating real social change. But while we're choosing to work these jobs, we need to force these organizations to give us the pay, benefits, and respect that we deserve. In addition, we need to confront and expose nonprofits for how they treat the people that they say they're "helping" or "advocating for" and the problems they say they're "solving". Because the reality is that they're doing neither in any meaningful sense of the term. They don't respect people calling into the call center any more than they respect the people picking up the phone. Real change comes through struggle, in the workplace and outside of it.

Student Debt Destroys the World

"Debt is the perfect commodity, and the future itself became the new market the financial market was born, ushering in the era of postmodernism."

"The value of the financial system grew to an astounding four times the real productivity of capital. Furthermore, the very concept of debt has as its implicit promise that the future must be an eternally frozen version of the present, as debt is a claim on the materialisation of future profits. As it became evident that the poor could never pay back such massive debts, the age of financial capitalism and its secret religion of the free-market ended. No-one believed in the banks and they collapsed, just as the pagan temples of ancient Greece fell into ruins when no-one believed in Zeus any longer."

-Introduction to the Apocalypse

Happy New Year!

As we enter 2010, we drag with us all the messes of the past year and before. Now renting an apartment with some friends in Washington, D.C. (the belly of the beast), yours truly is feeling the sting of two particular messes (unemployment and crippling student debt) more than ever. And I'm certainly not the only one.

One thing particular striking to me about the above quotes is the idea of debt freezing the future as a version of the present. As graduates, many of those of us whose families were not running a multi-thousand dollar household budget surplus in multiples of 10 to pour into the ever-more-expensive education system in this country have been deprived of a future. For years, decades, (forever?), we are tied to the past by our debt. Every month we pay tribute to the most expensive years of our lives in the hundreds of dollars we send to Bank of America, Nelnet, Wachovia, the US government and all the other loan sharks getting fat off of a broken system. We are debt serfs, and those of us lucky enough to have employment tithe a large portion of the meager paychecks from our entry-level jobs to rich people living in mansions somewhere. We are tied to the past when we are unable to move out of our homes because we cannot afford to pay for the cost of living as an independent adult. Our future is frozen when we are unemployed for months on end and our parents must support us as if we were still children.

Debt is the perfect commodity because we cannot escape it - the banks and lenders own our future. But just like the mortgage industry before it, the student loan giants are heading for collapse. When you have a loosely-regulated industry filled with companies offering easy (or not so easy) money to people whose ability to pay it back is questionable at best, it's going to go bust at some point.

These are not happy days for America's young and striving. Indeed, as the economy has rocked and tumbled its way through 2009, spewing jobs like a sea-sick tourist, these have become very, very bad days. In September, the unemployment rate for people between the ages of 16 and 24 hovered morosely at 18.1 percent, nearly double the national average for that month. At the same time, the actual employment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds dropped to a startling 46 percent, the grimmest such figure on record since 1948, the year the government began keeping track. Taken together, this same group of young people has lost more than 2.5 million jobs since the economy began deflating in December 2007, roughly one-third of all the jobs lost, making them the hardest-hit age group of the recession.

-"Generation Recession", The Nation

Given the reality of youth unemployment, underemployment, and indebtedness, it's not hard to see the end in sight. The question is: what are we going to do about it?

Let's look at what happened to the recent collapse of the housing market, a situation where you have many people who couldn't make payments on multi-thousand dollar home loans they had taken out. Similar to student loans, mortgages were made to lower-income folks in a market where housing was very expensive. Investors put tons of money into this market because the interest on these loans, which often got very high, was profit for them. The companies that made these loans, some of which had been created simply for this purpose (or rather, to make massive profits through these loans), hemorrhaged money and many collapsed because the inevitable happened: people without the money to pay high monthly loan payments stopped paying and the house of cards fell in on itself. This caused a chain reaction which tore through the whole capitalist system, causing massive losses across the board and producing the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression.

How did the government respond? Bailouts for these massive debt factories kept companies like Bank of America, AIG and Citigroup going on our money, while the most unstable fell apart at the seams (think lines of people making a run on IndyMac bank in California in the summer of '08, or google American Home Mortgage Services, one of the biggest mortgage lenders ever). For the people who were losing their homes, however, the government's generosity and understanding was noticeably absent. In other words, the government gave tons of money to wealthy corporations to keep them afloat while letting many, many people who got screwed by their loans lose their homes and ruin their credit ratings. Those that have gotten help have had to beg the same banks that abused them with ridiculously high interest rates and threats to take away their homes to re-negotiate their loans.

In other words, the government acted in the interest of the banks, not of the vast majority of people in this country.

We are the next bubble to burst - the rotten business of student loans has to fall in on itself at some point, and soon. Homeowners got and are still getting screwed while the rich are handed our money by the government they control. We're certainly not looking for the same treatment, but how do we avoid it?

Friday the 13th, the final installment

The final installment of my extended Friday the 13th album dump. Take a listen, let me know what you think!

After the Burial - Rareform


Every summer I make it a point of going the the Summer Slaughter tour, which has in the past had such awesome headlining bands as Necrophagist, Vader, Dying Fetus, Suffocation and more. However, the line-up usually includes a good amount of up-and-coming bands which get to play in front of a large audience drawn in by the more well-known acts. Whoever is selecting these newcomers has (generally) a pretty good ear, and I've been pleasantly surprised each year I've gone. After the Burial is one of those surprises from this past summer. Their name and album art give the appearance of a run-of-the-mill deathcore band, but take a listen and you will discover a very talented and technical death metal band (with no squeals!). Keep an eye on these guys, it sounds like they're going places.

Favorites: Ometh, Cursing Akenaten

Get it here.

The Meads of Asphodel - The Early Years


I have posted in this blog before about The Meads and how amazing I think they are, so if you're curious check out this post for more info. The Early Years is a compilation of the band's EPs, their half of the Jihad split with Mayhem, as well as miscellaneous covers and other songs they have done. Great as an introduction to their music or an addition to their discography if you've heard them already.

Favorites: I'd heard most of this already, but I really enjoyed the synth-heavy cover of Bulldozer's 'Neurodeliri' as well as 'Og's Last Stand' and 'Bleed for Me'

Get it here.

Viraemia - Viraemia EP


Another young, up-and-coming band from Phoenix, Arizona of all places. Viraemia is an extremely technical brutal death metal band that was recommended to me by my friend Will because of a link he clicked on accidentally while reading a different blog. I don't have too much to say about these guys, except that they're an interesting band and, if they keep up this kind of intensity in their music, they'll go far. Also, points for not having the cadaver on the operating table be obviously female-bodied - there can be brutal death metal without misogyny!

Get it here.

Fluisterwoud - Langs Galg En Rad


Black metal from the Netherlands, Fluisterwoud is one of those bands that I hear recommended often but only bothered to get their full-length debut, Langs Galg En Rad, in the past year. This album is very good - the band plays fairly straightforward 'raw' black metal, but tracks like the introductory 'Een Sinister Schouwspel' and the closing title track add some creepy atmosphere. Also, the album art is badass. Like many great bands, Fluisterwoud put out a single excellent album before breaking up (with another, post-mortem release which came out this year). Are they worth the hype? You'll have to check them out to answer that question.

Favorites: Langs Galg En Rad (the outro!), Hoer Van De Zeven Hemelen

Get it here.

David Bowie - Station to Station


Probably my favorite David Bowie album of all time. Flash back to 1976. David Bowie is an effete, coke-addled mess whose persona "The Thin White Duke" makes controversial allusions in support of fascism. I quote Wikipedia at length:

According to biographer David Buckley, the Los Angeles-based Bowie, fuelled by an "astronomic" cocaine habit and subsisting on a diet of peppers and milk, spent much of 1975–76 "in a state of psychic terror".^[6] Stories—mostly from one interview, pieces of which found their way into Playboy and Rolling Stone—circulated of the singer living in a house full of ancient-Egyptian artefacts, burning black candles, seeing bodies fall past his window, having his semen stolen by witches, receiving secret messages from The Rolling Stones, and living in morbid fear of fellow Aleister Crowley aficionado Jimmy Page.^[4] Bowie would later say of L.A., "The fucking place should be wiped off the face of the earth".

Out of this maelstrom comes Station to Station, one of his most acclaimed albums. Containing such classics as 'Golden Years' and 'Wild is the Wind', it's a must-have.

Favorites: Station to Station, Wild is the Wind.

Get it here.

Orgy - Candyass


This one takes me back. Candyass by the band Orgy was one of the first cd's I ever bought, and was definitely one of my most played of all time. Readers may remember these guys from their popular cover of New Order's 'Blue Monday'. That track came off of this, their debut album, which was released in 1998. For those who have not heard them, Orgy is synth rock which incorporates elements of industrial, New Wave and goth music into their sound and appearance.

Favorites: love the whole damn album

Get it here.

And that's a rap! I hope you enjoyed these posts, and please give me some feedback (these posts took some time and energy). Until next time...

Friday the 13th, part II

By popular demand, here are 5 more albums for the weekend of the 13th. I plan on sharing the rest tomorrow!

Immortal - Sons of Northern Darkness


I don't have many albums from bands which can be considered 'traditional' black metal from Europe, but this video made me go out and get this one. Immortal is an band which you can tell had a lot of influence on the creators of Metalocalypse - everything from the corpsepaint and ridiculous videos to the obsession with being as 'grim and frostbitten' as possible. Indeed, Sons of Northern Darkness is an album which contains such over-the-top song titles as 'In My Kingdom Cold', 'Antarctica', and of course the title song.

Favorites: One by One, In My Kingdom Cold

Check it out here.

Napalm Death - Time Waits for No Slave


Napalm Death is a fantastic grindcore (lately more death-influenced) band from England. They're probably one of my favorite metal bands going, especially given their consistent political ideology of anti-fascism, anti-authoritarianism, and even good gender analysis! If you're political at all (and maybe if you're not) and you want to get sold on these guys, check out this interview with current lead singer Barney Greenway where he talks about not having to be a fascist to listen to metal and getting into a brawl with a Russian hate band before a show. Time Waits for No Slave is their latest album, and a very good one. They are one of the most energetic and heaviest bands in their genre in my opinion, and this album is a testament to that.

Favorites: Fallacy Dominion, Larceny of the Heart

Get it here.

Anaal Nathrakh - Hell is Empty and All the Devils are Here


A recent find for me, Anaal Nathrakh is an industrial/black metal band also from England. Brutal stuff, much of their music is centered around apocalyptic themes and features screams, guns firing, explosions, and more. The vocalist himself is screaming much of the time, combined with some clean vocals interspersed throughout. They do what they do very well and I would consider them one of the more intense and dark bands of today. AN has put out a lot of music, all of it good, and is even starting to play live. I would consider Hell is Empty... to be a good example of their music, including songs like 'Until the World Stops Turning' which begins with the firing of a chain gun that is then backed by the guitar and drums. Very, very good.

Favorites: Virus Bomb, Genetic Noose

Get it here.

Agalloch - The Silence of Forgotten Landscapes


Folk/Ambient-ish black metal from the Pacific Northwest. Agalloch is one of my favorite metal bands, many of their songs dwelling on darkness within the human spirit and its reflection in the grandeur of nature. They also feature some of my favorite uses of clean vocals in the genre (check out John Haughm's voice in the album version of In the Shadow of Our Pale Companion). The Silence of Forgotten Landscapes is a live album ripped from a DVD and has a mix of songs from their very early work through Ashes Against the Grain), so you get a good mix of different music. If you're already a fan it's still worth checking out for curiosity value and hearing a little, though not too much, innovation by the band in their performances of studio songs.

Favorites: it's all pretty good!

Get it here.

Clint Mansell - The Fountain OST


A great score to a great film! The Fountain is a sci-fi/romance/fantasy directed by Darren Aronofsky which tells the story of a man's obsession to save his wife from her cancer which takes them through time and space. It's kind of hard to describe, but besides my endorsing it through this blog I think the score makes a great recommendation as well (I actually heard it before I saw the film, and once I did I knew I had to see it). Beautiful orchestral work composed by Clint Mansell (of Requiem for a Dream soundtrack fame) and performed by the Kronos Quartet (who also performed on Requiem's OST) and Mogwai. The score ranges from bombastic and fast-paced to depressed and lamenting, usually hovering somewhere around sad, fragile and contemplative.

Favorites: Holy Dread!, Death is the Road to Awe, Together We Will Live Forever

Get it here. (if it asks for a password, it's www.mediaportal.ru)

13 albums for Friday the 13th, pt. 1

Hey Kids,

Long time no talk. I've been pretty busy of late, of which I will get into more detail in a later post, but in the meantime here's some music. It's Friday the 13th, so I'll post two albums that I've been listening to lately. Get excited. Here are the first two!

Brand New - Daisy


Brand New's fourth studio album, Daisy continues in the noisy direction of their previous effort, The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me. BN is a band whose sound has varied considerably from album to album, and Daisy I think represents a harder, more 'mature' tendency. Lyrics are dark and well-delivered by Jesse Lacey, who also does a fair bit of yelling throughout the tracks. I know some of the people who (may still) read this blog will be shaking their heads at this more mainstream, pop-like entry, but give it a chance. Would recommend: Noro, Bought a Bride.

Download here

Paramore - Brand New Eyes


I figured I'd get both of the pop albums I've been listening to lately out of the way (or maybe there are more and I just don't want you to catch on). I think Paramore's a very decent/good band for its genre - their catchy songs and honest, straightforward lyrics have often reminded me of Jimmy Eat World around the time of Bleed American. This album seems to be a bit harder than All We Know is Falling and Riot!, as was signaled by the first single - Ignorance. Hayley Williams's vocals are great as well, and even though I don't have too much to say about the artistic merits of the band (capable as they may be) I'd recommend them if you're looking for something not too involved and pretty entertaining.

Favorite tracks: Careful, Playing God

Get it here

Moar to come!

Patriarchy is fucking our movement...again!

I write this as a male-identified radical who has witnessed a number of his female-bodied friends leave or consider leaving many of the organizations I have been a part of. There is nothing new about this - since I started seriously organizing with Students for a Democratic Society over two years ago I have seen many women leave. In many ways this post is long overdue, but I hope by writing it that we can begin to create positive change within SDS and the broader community of youth and student radicals.

No profound insights here - I'm always skeptical of privileged folks who read a zine or a blog post and think they're the shit when it comes to fighting patriarchy, racism, classism, etc. In fact, I think all of us who consider ourselves anti-sexists would do well to keep in mind that we cannot grade ourselves on how good of allies we are to those who do not have privilege. We will know we are doing something right when women stop leaving organizing and social spaces they share with us because they're sick of being talked over, disrespected, attacked, etc.

In a way, I think starting the process of fighting patriarchy is both incredibly easy and ridiculously difficult. I think it starts by taking seriously the fact that there's a problem with patriarchy within SDS, and that problem is the result of our actions and the actions of our fellow male organizers. This is a problem that can make attending meetings, planning and participating in actions, being in social spaces, etc. actively uncomfortable for female-bodied folks, and out of this we see people (male and female-bodied) leaving our groups en masse. Few people want to be in an organizing or social space which makes them feel unpleasant - those who do put up with it often don't put up for long. This is an immediate problem in our organizing - I would call it an emergency - and those with male privilege need to do their part to step up and change things before we find ourselves with the same empty shell of a group that the previous SDS ended up with.

I don't know about you all, but I'm tired of seeing my friends leaving SDS because the men in this group can't treat them like equal human beings. I want to see us get serious about fighting patriarchy at the upcoming NE SDS Convention, because I think we as a collective body can create a radically different world if we put our backs into it. If you're planning on coming, I would strongly suggest checking out the following links and definitely participating in any activities around gender!

Dan the Dude - Do's and Dont's for the Dudely Organizer

SDS Womyn's Caucus blog

Onwards!

Employment endnotes

Sorry for the lack of updates in the past months - I have been incredibly busy. As some of you may know, I was let go from my foreclosure organizing position at Housing Action Coalition of Rhode Island (HAC) at the end of last month. A week later Rosalina, the organizer at RI Coalition for the Homeless (RICH) I had been working with on this effort was told there was no work for her there anymore, and that her position was being ended immesiately due to doubts about future funding.

So ended our time in the belly of the housing nonprofit beast in Rhode Island.

There is a long story here, full of lies, betrayal and intrigue, and if anyone is interested in hearing the particulars I would be happy to share. For the purposes of this post I want to discuss a little about what I learned about how the nonprofit industry operates in this state.

A little context first: HAC is an extremely small nonprofit - the only staff while I was there was myself and my boss, Brenda Clement. Brenda is a lobbyist, meaning that she spent most of her time at the General Assembly talking with legislators about bills she (or the people paying her) wanted passed and negotiating to make that happen. RI Coalition for the Homeless is significantly larger and has much more funding. A third nonprofit, RI Housing, acted as a major funder and partner to both of these agencies.

Nonprofits are self-interested
At both HAC and RICH, funding and alliances with "power holders" (politicians, bankers and mortgage brokers, basically anyone who has a lot of money and decision-making power in this system) governed the actions that they supported and decisions they made. For example, after a protest against Bank of America by the Tenant and Homeowner Association (the Association) Rosalina and I had helped organize, my boss complained about being criticized by her connections at the bank. She made it clear that, while BofA maybe be putting people out of their homes, they also gave money to housing groups and had power in the General Assembly and so were not a good target.

A related example: when the Association demanded accountability from State Senator Juan Pichardo because of his refusal to sponsor a bill they wanted put forward (after he said he would and spoke at one of their events), my coworker and myself were told that we were not allowed to support this action and (to quote my boss) "Juan can handle his constituents". That is to say, the Association was a problem and needed to be controlled, and HAC's support was based entirely on whether its members wanted what it wanted. When Juan saw an e-mail I had forwarded for the event from my e-mail account at work, he contacted my boss and I was let go from my job a month earlier than I had expected.

They are disconnected from the people they supposedly serve/advocate for/etc.
The board of HAC is made up of Community Development Corporations, the board of RICH is largely shelter providers to people who are homeless, and Rhode Island Housing has BANKS on its board. All three of their executive directors are white even though the people that use their services are generally lower-income people of color. Simply in regards to foreclosure work, I'm sure that none of these people has ever been in danger of losing their home because they couldn't afford to pay a mortgage.

What is the role of the affected community, then? In this case, while my boss was negotiating a harmful compromise bill with bankers and mortgage lenders, she did everything in her power to keep the Association members unaware and out of these talks. People who are at risk of losing their homes are not in control, no more than people who are homeless control RICH. What the community was supposed to do was create photo-ops and make some noise while the real power politics played out behind closed doors.

These observations have been based largely upon my own personal experiences with two particular nonprofits. In that sense, I make no claim that this is how all nonprofits work. In fact, at least one of the community-based groups in Providence which has been taking on the organizing work (DARE - Direct Action for Rights and Equality) is also incorporated as a nonprofit. However, I do think that we need to consider how these characteristics that I noted in this post are present in nonprofits in general. There is an existing critique of nonprofits and the nonprofit model from the radical left, and I think it's crucial that we think about these things more critically. From my own standpoint, I graduated college wanting to go into the nonprofit sector because I had read a lot of materials in classes about how NGO's (non-governmental organizations) were a growing alternative to private companies and more connected with communities. I would imagine many young people in my generation, especially those who went to liberal arts colleges, were given a similar story. It's important that young radicals think critically about everything that presents itself as an alternative to the system, especially when they are offering money.

How can we struggle against student loans?

Hey all - pardon the long absence, but things here have been rather intense. The housing establishment in Rhode Island, my employer included, have been busy selling us down the river, but that's another post...

A few weeks ago the Providence Journal ran a front page article on student loans and how students are getting reamed by the rising costs of higher education. Apparently the average cost of a private, 4 year college is now $34,132 (which is 3K less than what I was paying my first year of college, good times). And the number of students both public and private who are going into debt to afford higher education continues to grow. And with a deep recession in full swing, defaults on student loans are skyrocketing.

I believe a natural way to resist student debt is on the student side - fighting for lower and frozen tuition rates as well as more financial aid for students. Many chapters of Students for a Democratic Society have been at the forefront of demanding tuition-related changes (among other things) as part of the Student Power for Accessible Education Campaign.

But as the demands of the SPfAE campaign state, just like SDS itself, this isn't just about people currently in school. Goal #3 is debt cancellation for ALL student loans. Yet as far as I am aware there has been little collective struggle by college graduate to push for mass debt cancellation or for anything else student debt-related. This is a huge struggle, but a necessary one. We also have the opportunity to create radical change in the world! Student debt organizing seems a lot like foreclosure organizing:
-A LOT of people are affected by student debt. Not just students, but families of students as well
-There isn't a lot of sympathy for the bad guys in this situation - banks and lenders are getting massive bailouts with our money
-The problems affecting people are very serious, with a big impact on status of living. A huge student debt burden can make even renting impossible and take a big part of someone's paycheck
-The government is doing very little to solve the problem!

Of course, there are challenges as well. For example, much like the banks and lenders foreclosing on homes, student loan holders can be hard to target. While some people get loans from groups like Bank of America or Wells Fargo, there are companies like Nelnet working specifically in student loans that have few or no local offices. While there are many people dealing with the burden of student debt, they tend to be more scattered than people in the same neighborhood losing their homes while, like those struggling with foreclosure, they are dealing with a variety of different institutions. And unlike foreclosure resistance, the consequences for direct resistance (in this case, nonpayment) has the potential for more serious consequences than simply not moving from a home. Finally, there is a serious stigma against debtors in this country. Unlike the credit card crisis, student loans are not held by as many people in the US and as a result the tendency to "blame the victim" appears to be stronger.

So, how can we move forward on this? This is a work in progress, so I'm trying to think more about it. Thoughts?

Bailout? or FAILout?

In terms of shifting wealth from working people to the ultra-rich corporate elite, I would say that the massive amount of money being pumped into U.S. corporations by the government has been a huge success. AIG, Bank of America, Citicorp, U.S. Bank, and all of their cronies have made off with billions of dollars of our tax money and with little to no accountability or oversight. When this series of thefts were being "debated" in Congress, liberal paladins such as Sen. Christopher Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank (and Barack Obama, for that matter) wrung their hands and claimed they were "meeting a national crisis" and therefore had to pass something that was infuriating people around the nation. The necessity argument was put forth by most of the powerholders who handed our money to greedy corporate failures in the face of general outrage.

However, from the discussions I have had through my job, the working people here have not bought into this myth. The idea that banks that have received our money have an obligation to us is very much present in the minds of people who are being threatened by these very banks with the loss of their homes. And truly, the situation in this country is insane when you look at it with common sense. Consider:

-Banks that require our taxmoney to stay in business are throwing us out of our homes. They are using our money to do this.

-Banks are continuing to enforce the terms of predatory loans, even though these loans are illegal in many states now. This means that even if you were targeted for a loan you could never repay because of your race, age, and/or income, Bank of America is still demanding you pay that loan or lose your home.

-Banks are punishing workers who are laid off or have their hours cut by foreclosing on homeowners who can no longer afford their mortgages. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in February, the average length of time someone in the US is unemployed is 19.8 weeks. That's almost 5 months - and unemployment in the US is skewed to look better than it actually is! A bank will generally begin the foreclosure process after three missed payments, meaning 3 months. Even if you have some money saved up, that's a huge burden on top of trying to pay all of the other bills and find a job!

-Banks are evicting tenants from their apartments for no other reason than they want it empty to sell it! These are people whose money is keeping these banks in business, and they are being forced out of their homes! Even if they are okay with leaving, many receive little or no compensation and very little time.

-The US government owns AIG - it has given $170 billion in our money to this sinkhole of corporate greed. In return, AIG has sent money to corporations that are already receiving bailout funds as well as gigantic multinational banks not even based in the US. On top of this, the company is awarding millions (perhaps over a billion) in bonuses to its executives! Let's keep in mind that the Obama administration put protection in the latest bailout specifically to protect corporate bonuses and that the man himself voted for the AIG bailouts! One of the fundamental contradictions in all of this is that the government, which owns 80% of AIG, is saying that it cannot (read: will not) do anything to stop these bonuses. This is "privatizing gains and socializing losses" at its most obvious.

-Let's not forget that high-profile liberals associated with the bailout such as Chris Fraud and Barney Bank have both received a huge amount of money and exceptional mortgages from banks and corporations who are now being held up by our money.

What are we seeing as a result of this insanity? Bank losses are socialized - meaning workers have to pay for their greedy practices - while the profits of executives at these banks is protected as a private gain that the government has no right to touch. This has always been the case - it's how capitalism works, and companies and investors have been bailed out for hundreds of years - but never has it been so high-profile and so massive. People are extremely angry at what their money is being used for, especially considering that the foreclosure and unemployment rates are accelerating all over the country. The banks and mortgage companies, along with other massive corporations, are on the giving end of all of this, and it's the poor and working people here who are getting plowed under.

So what is happening in this country? Conservatives who for the last 8 years built this monster (with the help or consent of many liberals) are now able to sit back and play the populist card against people like Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd even as they halt the taxation of the AIG bonuses in Congress. The Obama administration is now worried over a popular backlash against its pro-wealthy priorities. Consider the following quote:

"The change now is you have a free floating economic anxiety that has expressed itself in a kind of lashing out in those being bailed out and people who are bailing out," Michael Kazin, a professor at Georgetown University who has written extensively on populism. "There's not really a sense of what the solution is.

"I do think there's a potential for a damn-everybody-in-power kind of sentiment," Kazin said.

This analysis is not uncommon. In Britain, police are preparing for a long, violent 'summer of rage' as many of those most affected by the global recession take to the streets. Will we see the same thing in the US? One can imagine the possibilities if we can successfully build a movement out of the anger and pessimism about people in power!

Depression and Sea Creatures

Giant Squid - The Ichthyologist

I was going to post this right when it leaked, but in the weak since I downloaded it I have given myself a chance to discover just how great this album is. Giant Squid is a doomy, sludgy metal band from Austin, Texas. They use aquatic imagery to convey a sense of despair and hopelessness. Consider:

I befriended deepest fathoms
and returned stronger still
starving for your praise at the crest of every swell
I find dissuasion of tides
I find dissuasion of tides

Their latest release, The Ichthyologist, is apparently a concept album about a man who turns to the sea to escape personal tragedy, only to see his feelings reflected in that which he surveys. And boy, does it sound like it. Heavy, crushing riffs and dark, depressing lyrics. Whether you're a flaky, obnoxious hipster looking for the next cleancut "post-metal" band or someone who actually has an appreciation of music, this is very worth your time.

Reason to listen: you love extended nautical metaphors.

Recommended tracks: All of them!
My favorites right now are:
#6 Sevengill (Notorynchus Cepedianus)
#8 Blue Linckia (Linckia Laevigata)

Enjoy!

The secret lives of banks and mortgage companies, pt. 2

In my last post on this subject, I mentioned that banks and mortgage companies almost always choose to kick families out of their homes after foreclosure - even if they are paying tenants. Having knocked on many doors with a fellow organizer since my last update, I cannot begin to relate the amount of situations we've run into with people facing eviction from their homes. For the purposes of this post, however, I will say that those directly impacted by foreclosure in Providence (and elsewhere, I would venture) are predominantly Hispanic people with low incomes. Neighborhoods which fit this demographic - among them the West End, Olneyville, Silver Lake, Upper and Lower South Providence - also tend to be highest in foreclosures. Decimated streets such as Hanover and Ford, rife with destroyed, empty three-family homes are a monument to the War on the Poor and the War on poor people of color in particular.

As with so many other things, undocumented people are particularly oppressed by post-foreclosure evictions. It seems to me reasonable to assume that all the confusion and distortion that surrounds tenant rights after foreclosure among documented people is also found among people who lack papers. However, there is also a strong and understandable fear of both seeking help from groups outside of the community confrontation with authorities such as the bank or the government. Rhode Island's racist governor, with support from the overwhelmingly Democratic General Assembly, has issued an executive order stepping up police actions against suspected undocumented people (read: cops harassing and detaining brown people). Documents from mortgage servicers are intimidating and almost always in English. And even if an undocumented person wanted to move out, money received through cash-for-keys is counted as taxable income and thus requires either a Social Security number or Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN). Given all of this it is easy to imagine that many people say nothing and continue to be exploited by landlords who collect rent after foreclosure and simply pack up and leave once they receive an eviction notice (if not before).

How is it possible for people to get organized in such a climate? This goes beyond systems of support - we're talking standing up and fighting back. I can't answer this question, because in part it's not mine to answer. I will say that until people start taking direct action, the racist power structure in Rhode Island will continue to tyrannize the people of this state. This is a struggle that's beyond fighting for a place to live - this is about living with dignity and safety wherever you choose to.

On Gaza

To be honest, I haven't been following the news coming from occupied Palestine in the past week too closely. I will scan a few of the lead articles on Yahoo! News and Al Jazeera to hear the new round-up of Zionist brutalities - how many people slaughtered, how many mosques destroyed, and so forth. While the latest horrors are worse than normal, Zionist aggression against the Palestinian people is nothing out of the ordinary. Palestinians will endure. That being said, the fact that so many are standing by and letting this crime against humanity continue is shameful to say the least. It is imperative that all those who stand for human rights, especially those of us in the belly of the beast, must mobilize in a meaningful way.

Some quick thoughts:
- There's a lot of talk in the news about Hamas breaking the cease-fire with Israel, to which Israel responded with this overwhelming aggression. This is straight-up not true. Israel broke the cease-fire with Hamas on November 4th, as reported in the Guardian. Furthermore, there has been a shocking, possibly willful silence about the fact that Israel has been depriving the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip of food, fuel, medical supplies and other essentials since the democratically-elected Hamas averted a (U.S. supported) Fatah coup in Gaza. Palestinians have been under extreme pressure since they voted overwhelmingly for Hamas in 2006 elections, and this crushing weight extended into the latest cease-fire. Even if it was Hamas that launched the first rockets, they would certainly have been justified given the kind of treatment their people have received.

- Obama has said nothing about the Zionist massacres in Gaza, even though he had plenty to say about the attacks in Mumbai. Even though the new administration's position on Palestine is quite clear (Obama loves it, Biden loves it, Clinton loves it, and so forth) his entourage of liberal apologists are already cutting their teeth with insightful back-and-forths like this one from The Nation:

Will people understand that Obama seems silent now it is because he does not want to pronounce on foreign policy while the Bush administration is still in office?
As a government bureaucrat myself, I understand that. Whether the common people understand why you don't do anything in a case where humanitarian law and international law is ignored and broken in such a brutal manner, I'm not sure.

Perhaps the Obamanation's escape to a pricey getaway in Hawai'i was in fact just a clever way to escape all those prying reporters asking him to expand upon statements like the one he made when visiting Sderot last July, where he said "If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing". One could very well ask why the very same mentality should not apply the Palestinian reaction to Zionist terror. But maybe this logic is too complex for the "common people" in the United States. We are so deluged with propaganda from our militantly pro-Zionist, anti-Arab/Muslim political and media establishment that that may even be true - common sense escapes us when we consider this bloody imperialist bootprint in the region. Regardless, Obama's silence is not surprising given his oft-stated love affair with the Monster of the Middle East. YES WE CAN - PERPETUATE THE RACIST STATE!

- The liberal establishment is shaking in its shoes at the prospect of an even more popular Hamas that is expected to emerge from the blood of the martyred Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. I dug this gem up from another blog on The Nation's website:

Over the past two years, Kuttab notes, Palestinian support for Hamas -- an ultrareligious, terrorist-inclined wing of the fanatical Muslim Brotherhood movement -- has declined sharply, from a 30 percent in 2006 to 22 percent in August, 2007, to just 17 percent in 2008 -- compared to 40 percent for Fatah, the mainstream, secular nationalist wing of the Palestinian body politic. Kuttab points out that Hamas has "turned down every legitimate offer from its nationalist PLO rivals and Egyptian mediators." Now, he says, the attacks are a "bonanza for Hamas" and says that Israel's assault will achieve "results exactly the opposite of its publicly proclaimed purposes."

This paragraph is more problematic than I care to go into at the moment - the statistics, for example, are cited selectively to make the decline in support shown in the data appear more dramatic than it was originally reported. The description of Hamas is oversimplified and skewed, and why you would venerate the corrupt, colluding and underhanded Fatah party is beyond me. Given the rhetoric, my suspicion is that it reflects the traditional leftist bias towards "right-thinking" secular parties no matter how terribly they treat the people they supposedly represent.

- As for the idea that Hamas attacked Israel in some sort of selfish bid to gain popularity, let's read from a summary of the same report that Kuttab/Dreyfuss cite.

The percentage of Palestinians who support "resistance operations" against Israeli targets rose from 43.1 percent in September 2006 to 49.5% at present. Support for this option was highest in the Gaza Strip, at 58.1%, with 24.5% in the West Bank agreeing.

Palestinians who support bombing attacks against Israeli civilians rose from 44.8% in June 2006 to 48% in September 2006 and to 50.7% now.

Again, more Gazans support these operations (65.1%), compared with 42.3% of Palestinians in the West Bank.

The Palestinian public is divided on the rocket attacks on Israel: 39.3% said the firing of these rockets was "useful" to Palestinian national interests, while 35.7% said they were harmful.

This was as of April of 2008. I would also add that a more recent poll by the same people in October found that the vast majority of Palestinians felt that the truce between Hamas and Israel either made no difference or made things worse.


Here's to the Islamic resistance in Palestine. From the river to the sea - Palestine will be free!

Bitter, Sarastic, Brutal

The Meads of Asphodel - Damascus Steel

What do you get when you combine Biblical apocrypha, militant secular humanism, medieval English armor, and a hefty dose of misanthropy? Mix them together and you find yourself with one of England’s best-kept secrets: The Meads of Asphodel. Surfacing from the depths in 1998, they are anything but standard fare in the world of metal. They bill themselves as “English Fucking Black Metal”, and never fail to live up to and surpass the standards set out by a country from which emerged so many great bands in the past.

Like many of the better contemporary black metal bands, the Meads occupy the niche of ’experimental’ music. They can play more traditional, ’grim and frostbitten’ black - their 2000 debut The Excommunication of Christ was based largely around this style - but even then it was evident that the Meads were something different. Metatron’s voice is dry and raspy but he doesn’t growl or scream, making for some unique vocals which have been likened to “someone with throat cancer who really would like to sing, but coughs up intestines every time he tries“#. Don’t worry, his voice isn’t as ugly as that might lead you to believe, but it is unique. While The Excommunication… featured the more stripped-down instrumental section of traditional ‘cold‘ black metal, by the following album Exhuming the Grave of Yeshua guitarist and the drummer at the time Jaldaboath had begun flexing his muscles. And lest your preconceptions about black metal get the best of you, know that Metatron and company have produced a techno song - the remake of the demo “Book of Dreams” on Exhuming… - and covered Louis Armstrong’s “Wonderful World” (the latter, of course, with their signature sense of cynical humor).

It is this sense of cynicism, along with a good degree of humor, which pervades this music. For example, a verse from their Armstrong cover states: “I see ethnic cleansing / pain beyond belief / whole nations murdered / sorrow and grief / and I think to myself…”. Their latest EP, In the Name of God Welcome to Planet Genocide, contains songs such as “My Beautiful Genocide” and “A Baptism in the Warm Piss of Slaughtered Children”. They also have a taste for impressively long song titles on their tracks over 10 minutes, naming the last track on 2005’s Damascus Steel “Behold The Kindred Battle Carcasses Strewn Across The Bloodied Dunes Of Gilgamesh Mute In The Frenzied Clamour Of Death's Rolling Tongue And Ravenous Bursting Steel”. Life’s a joke, and it’s deadly serious.

If there is an issue with the Meads, it is their perceived anti-religion and especially anti-Islamic stance. The latter has gained them an unfortunate following among racists, xenophobes, and Muslim haters of all stripes in their native England as well as here. And indeed, a shallow reading of the band’s songs can lead to the conclusion that the Meads do indeed hate Islam. Their split with Mayhem, entitled Jihad, has songs entitled “Jihad - the Gristly Din of Killing Steel” and “Assassins of Allah”. At the beginning of “Behold the Bloodied Dunes…” on Damascus Steel, the muezzin’s call to prayer precedes the crash of thunder. Christianity too comes under fire, as there is a general tendency in their music (especially their earlier work) to criticize the divinity of Jesus as well as the Church of Rome. Yet if one simply examines their website, one will find the motto "The Meads of Asphodel believe in all peoples' right to live in peace, free from the shackles of inflicted dogma and servitude". What the Meads are critiquing, it appears, is not any specific religion so much as fundamentalist interpretations of such which lead to violent conflict and the deaths of innocents.

So, if you can appreciate excellent music and insightful social commentary conveyed through a mushroom-induced haze by men in medieval English armor, this band’s for you!

The secret lives of banks and mortgage companies, pt. 1

The anonymity of banks and servicers in the foreclosure crisis is terrifying, and it allows them to commit a multitude of abuses which go largely unnoticed and unpunished. Working with people facing foreclosure and eviction in Rhode Island, one observes how banks and mortgage companies take full advantage of our Dickensian dearth of laws protecting tenant and homeowners. Here are some of the most flagrant examples - these are real people I have spoken to over the course of my outreach.

Some quick notes: cash for keys is offered by a bank to a tenant as an incentive for the tenant to move without the bank having to go to court to evict that person. An eviction will cost the bank around $2000 per family they throw out of their home, so this is in their interest, and most will lowball tenants as much as possible (you may be offered as little as $500 to move in a very short amount of time). Not all banks offer cash-for-keys.

Banks and lenders are not required to evict tenants or homeowners after foreclosure, but as a rule the overwhelming majority choose to do so. Foreclosed homes sit vacant for months, and are often vandalized (pictures to come soon).

-Yolanda was the last tenant in a three-family apartment building that had been foreclosed by HSBC, a multinational bank. Her landlord ran away with her security deposit, and she was unable to get in touch with him. The bank offered her $500 to move out in 24 hours. She did not accept, as this was totally unreasonable for a mother of three who needed to find another affordable apartment. They then offered $400, then nothing. The bank shut the water off to the house - a "self-help eviction" to force her out which the bank had "looked into" and found to be legal in RI. The servicer - First American REO Servicing based out of Denver, told her that the shutoff wasn't their problem, and that she needed to leave her apartment. Needing to take care of her children and facing an apartment infested with cockroaches, Yolanda moved out. The house, located in a high-foreclosure neighborhood, was vandalized soon after and her belongings there were stolen. When I called First American they said they could only offer $800, but when pressed relented and offered the $1600 Yolanda wanted if she would leave by the end of the month and the apartment was in "broom-swept" condition.

-We spoke to a woman who is living in her third foreclosed apartment in a few block radius. She had moved into the three-family apartment on Sorrento St. only last month, and was in the process of fixing it up when we knocked on her door. All of her landlords have stolen her security deposits, and her most recent landlady took this woman into her house when the landlady was already in default on her mortgage. When we talked to the people in the apartment building, the landlady called her and told her that we were lying about the house being in foreclosure and that she needed to keep paying rent. Tenants do not need to be told about a foreclosure under RI law, allowing landlords to collect rent illegally for months and run away with deposits before the tenants even know what's going on. This woman has three children and one on the way. All three families in this building stand to be evicted and RI does not have "just cause" eviction, meaning that banks and lenders do not have to prove anything to have someone evicted once they own the house. The foreclosing lender is Saxon Mortgage.

-Virgilio is a (former) landlord that we've been speaking with is facing eviction from his home, which was foreclosed by predatory lender American Home Mortgage Services (formerly Option One). At the time that he went into default (stopped paying) on his adjustable-rate mortgage, he was paying around $3000 a month. This is not an uncommon amount, and many long-time homeowners who refinanced with the wrong company during the real estate "boom" have faced similar payments as their interest rates "reset". The lender that exploited Virgilio is now forcing him out of his home. He is on disability and suffers from severe depression; his son is successful in high school basketball but his father has no idea where they'll live. His money depleted by months of unfair loan servicing and a cut in his disability benefits, he cannot afford to rent without Section 8 (subsidized) housing but cannot find any in the state without a long waiting list. He is seeking cash for keys, but the servicer, Westcott Properties, informed me that AHMS rarely offers it and when it does only gives around $500. The woman I spoke to complained about being yelled at by Virgilio and informed me that she had around 100 cases to deal with (they're a local servicer). AHMS/Option One/their parent company H&R Block was recently forced by courts in Massachusetts to give 45 day notice on foreclosures initiated by them so the court may examine whether the loan was predatory. This essentially forces the company to negotiate with the borrower to modify the loan (fix the interest rate, lower the payment plan, etc.). We have no such law to sue with in RI. Virgilio's court date for eviction is December 12th.

more to come...

Change I don't believe in (and neither does he)

On my way back from a cynical but delicious "election party" the other night, I found myself in traffic backed up by cheering Obamaphiles taking the streets of Providence. I watched in bemused silence as maybe 50 people marched down Thayer cheering "Yes We Can", pondering how the election of some rich warmonger in the pockets of the banks and nuclear industry could get these people to stop traffic on a Tuesday night but actions against the things that really matter are so often watched from afar.

Oh well, I'm sure they'll be out again in 2012, unless the Obamanation happens to visit little old RI before then. Socialists really need to have a skillshare with liberals in the US about how to do the cult of personality right. Where are the giant signs of his face? The pomp and circumstance? At least they got the speaking on cue right during his acceptance speech.

This is the change we should know better than. We're witnessing the birth of another generation of apologists. It's not 100 days anymore, and gone are the grandiose promises of ending the war in Iraq quickly or serious economic relief. The mantra on the parts of the left that should know better seems to be "we need to pressure him to keep his word". Which word is that? Let's recall Obama's own words around the time that criticism from silly liberals who should have known better in the first place was emerging in response to his stances on immunity for telecommunication companies that spied on Americans among other things. Obama stated that "the people who say this haven't apparently been listening to me" and goes on to explain that "You're not going to agree with me on 100 percent of what I think, but don't assume that if I don't agree with you on something that it must be because I'm doing that politically". Well put.

That being said, we are now witnessing the lack of an "exit strategy" by the progressives that threw themselves behind Obama observed in a prescient interview with Naomi Klein. So for example, when Obama appoints a vicious pro-Israel, pro-war brute as his Chief of Staff we witness a spectacular mix of anger, confusion, and most of all silence. This article from Alternet is demonstrative. It spends a good amount of time wringing its hands about how bad Rahm Emanuel is, then closes with a declaration that Obama should know better:

However, this does not necessarily mean that Obama as president will pursue nothing better than a Clintonesque center-right agenda. Someone with Obama's intelligence, knowledge and leadership qualities need not be unduly restricted by the influence of his chief of staff as less able presidents have. At the same time, this shocking appointment of Emanuel is illustrative of the need for the progressive base that brought him to power to not celebrate too long and to refocus our energies into pushing hard to ensure that the change Obama promised is something we really can believe in.

There's something deliciously authoritarian about these sentiments. As if Obama's stances are substantively different from Emanual's, and he's the wise leader who needs to hear from his followers. It seems that, despite Obama being clear about just what kind of change he represented (nominal at best), his supporters are still married to the illusion they created and that the campaign sustained. Indeed, not many people were listening in the first place.

Two Bible Stories for the Price of One

Yes, I know I'm the only one posting right now, but I haven't given up
hope yet. As evidence, I'm posting two albums about going through hard
times but emerging better than before. The alternate theme of this
theme-album post could be two albums I enjoy by bands from a country I
hate (Israel). They're also based on stories from the Bible, so how
about that?

Orphaned Land - Mabool

This isn't a surprise to most people involved in this blog. An album
which re-tells the story of the Great Flood, it's full of proggy
goodness and over-the-top metal stylings which are fun for the whole
family. Kind of long for my taste, and by long I do mean rather
repetitive and a little boring, it's still a very solid showing from
Orphaned Land. The band also tantalizes us with their signature
regional influence, bringing in the saz, bouzouki, and oud, and on top
of that their guitar is fantastic. They're not the be-all-end-all of
"oriental" metal as some may say, but they're a very good example of
what can be done with the genre.

Favorite Tracks: The Kiss of Babylon (The Sins), Norra El Norra
(Entering the Ark)


Enjoy!

Amaseffer - Slaves for Life

Now here's one I doubt any of you have heard. Amaseffer is also from
Israel, and they put out a hell of a metal album. This one's based on
the story of Moses and I would say the stronger of the two. First of
all, while it's longer by about ten minutes it feels much shorter. The
songs are also a little more distinct. On the other hand Slaves for
Life is also an airier album which uses clean vocals and soaring
guitar solos for almost the entire album. I'd consider them Israel's
answer to Symphony X in their general sound as well as song structure.
This is no surprise given the person that produced their album has
helped mix Kamelot and Evergrey among other power and prog metal
bands. Oh yeah, and their lead singer's from Therion.

Favorite tracks: Slaves for Life, Midian


Enjoy!

45 minutes of pure bliss

Well, not exactly, but it's damn close. For your delectation I present to you the album/song Dies Irae.

Devil Doll was an experimental rock band composed of members from Italy and Slovenia during the late 80's. One need only read the Wikipedia entry to understand how weird their history is, and I will not go on at length here. Suffice to say that the history of this band is as over-the-top as the music they produced.

Dies Irae is a hard album to describe. Most of it is Mr. Doctor playing the piano and singing, interspersed with orchestral interludes, violin, and operatic vocals. It uses the Day of Judgment as a metaphor for his descent into madness and regret, or something like that. This is one of my favorite albums ever, and I realized that when I found myself listening to it in its entirety multiple times in one night. I don't even remember how I found these guys, but here you go. If you like it I've got pretty much everything they've released.


Enjoy!

Romanian Black Metal

Between the vampires and the castles in which they dwell, Romania
seems like a pretty metal place. That being said I have heard only one
band from that country, but it's a good one. Negură Bunget is an
"atmospheric" black metal band from Timişoara that produces excellent
music. To quote the description on last.fm, they "combine Romanian
history and folklore into a mystical sonic adventure, quite literally
inspired by their homeland of Transylvania". If the term 'mystical
sonic adventure' strikes you as pretentious, consider the drummer's
description of the band's name:

Negură Bunget is a black fog coming from a deep dark dense forest.
The name tries to picture somehow the kind of atmosphere, both
musical and spiritual we'd want to create through our music. It has
also an esoteric nature, standing for the inexpressible parts of our
ideology. The two words are also from the Tracic substrate of the
Romanian language (the oldest one, containing about 90 words) as the
interest for our local history and spirituality is something of
crucial importance and meanings for us as a band

Despite (or perhaps because of) the band taking itself so seriously it
manages to produce a unique blend of black metal, traditional
instruments, and experimental atmospheric elements. This is best
displayed on Om, their fourth full-length release. This is not an album I listen to often but rather a favorite that I drag into my playlist once in a while when I wish to enjoy a great piece of music
in its entirety. The album is a rich tapestry of sounds - the band makes much use of keyboards to provide an ambiance which suits the guitar, drums and traditional instruments well. Each track bleeds into the next as we are transported into a higher realm. I highly recommend listening to this album through in one sitting in order to experience it to its fullest.

Highlight tracks: it's all great, but Țesarul de Lumini (track 2) might be my favorite.

Enjoy!



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