News of Interest for 10/06/06

Rap's Captive Audience
"A respectable album run inside prison means selling as few as 1,000 cassettes. (Although rules vary from state to state, CDs are banned in most maximum-security facilities because of their potential as weapons.) In recent years, RBC's prison marketing has resulted in underground hits for Compton rapper-producer DJ Quik — now serving a five-month sentence for assault — and Memphis rapper 8 Ball. To hear it from the company's executives, a cellblock hit can lead to outside sales of up to 300,000 copies: major success for an independent record label like Woodpile's imprint, West Coast Mafia Records."
Iraq’s diverse Shia
"Surprisingly, Iran’s strategy is not based on a sense of allegiance but on its understanding of the Shia, whose diversity it recognises, along with their different collective identities. Iran realises that there is a deep social divide between conservative Shia (the religious community in Najaf, traders in the holy cities, urban middle classes) and the “revolutionary” masses who support al-Sadr (4)."
Software Being Developed to Monitor Opinions of U.S.
'The new software would allow much more rapid and comprehensive monitoring of the global news media, as the Homeland Security Department and, perhaps, intelligence agencies look “to identify common patterns from numerous sources of information which might be indicative of potential threats to the nation,” a statement by the department said.'
Democracy, Thai style - Ban the politicians
'Politics is a dirty word in many countries, but mistrust runs so deep here that those who have been members of political parties or have held political office during the past two years are banned from doing what would in other countries be seen as their primary job: writing the supreme law of the land. "This is democracy Thai style, not European style," said Pramuan Ruchanaseree, the co-founder of the Pracharat political party and thus disqualified from taking part. "No one trusts politicians."'
'Queer Socialism' Intersections: The LGBTQ Role in Society, the Struggle and Socialism
'Like most sectors, the LGBTQ sector is not monolithic. The LGBTQ community crosses class, ethnic/racial, national and gender lines. Resistance to the organized attacks of the radical Right has been a unifying factor, but despite this resistance, understandable contradictions exist. The liberal sector of the bourgeoisie have sought to exploit these contradictions and have sought to include, within limits, the struggle for LGBTQ recognition into their hegemony. Clinton's policy of "don't ask, don't tell" did not fundamentally attack the roots of LGBTQ oppression, and while the majority of individuals who were thrown out of the military for being queer were African-American women, white gay males were the main beneficiaries of this policy and were held up as the poster children by various organization for this project. The movement for gays in the military also raised questions from the Left in the LGBTQ movement about why we should struggle to be part of the military apparatus of the bourgeoisie.'
Staging for war
"Here is a prediction we sincerely and desperately do not want to see come true -- that the Bush administration will launch an air attack on Iran's nuclear research facilities in late October."
Confronting Sexism and Misogyny: Where My Brothas At?
"As a Black man, my racial identity makes me mad as hell at the fact that seven White boys were brazen enough to publicly show explicit pictures of Black women without fear of consequence. It conjures uncomfortable images of the historical exploitation of Black women by White men that is rarely discussed. As a social/community psychologist, however, I am perplexed by the fact that, to my knowledge, no public statement condemning the acts has come from Black fraternities, Black male faculty, or Black male administrators – either at UGA or any university."
Meet the "Whack Iran" Lobby
"Exiles peddling shaky intelligence, advocacy groups pressing for regime change, neocons bent on remaking the Middle East. Sound familiar?"
Fight club uncovered in Stockholm
"The combatants and spectators are said to include well-known figures from the Swedish film industry, as well as estate agents, salesmen and a number of people well-known in the upper-market bars and clubs of Stockholm's Stureplan area."
How Al Qaeda views a long Iraq war
"But a letter that has been translated and released by the US military indicates that Al Qaeda itself sees the continued American presence in Iraq as a boon for the terror network, which has recently shown signs of expanding into the Palestinian territories and North Africa."