A Different Drummer

Esquire's incredible piece on America's leading white supremacists, and why they are voting for Barack:

According to Rocky Suhayda, the chairman of the American Nazi Party:

“White people are faced with either a negro or a total nutter who happens to have a pale face. Personally I’d prefer the negro. National Socialists are not mindless haters. Here, I see a white man, who is almost dead, who declares he wants to fight endless wars around the globe to make the world safe for Judeo-capitalist exploitation, who supports the invasion of America by illegals -- basically a continuation of the last eight years of Emperor Bush. Then, we have a black man, who loves his own kind, belongs to a Black-Nationalist religion, is married to a black women -- when usually negroes who have ‘made it’ immediately land a white spouse as a kind of prize -- that’s the kind of negro that I can respect. Any time that a prominent person embraces their racial heritage in a positive manner, it’s good for all racially minded folks. Besides, America cares nothing for the interests of the white American worker, while having a love affair with just about every non-white on planet Earth. It’d be poetic justice to have a non-white as titular chief over this decaying modern Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Read the whole article...

Preparing for a week of reporting from the Mother of the Earth next week, I have been making some calls and trying to set up interviews and meetings with people in Cairo. Or at least trying to.

The large Egyptian organisations whose main switchboard phone numbers are either disconnected, not working or ringing out without being answered include:

- The Egyptian Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology
- The Egyptian Ministry of Investment
- Orascom Telecom (the largest private sector company in Egypt)
- Vodafone Egypt
- Xceed (ironically, Egypt's largest call centre operator)
- Telecom Egypt

I know the country has problems and sometimes the odds are stacked up against you there, but seriously, this is not complicated stuff. Get main switchboard number. Post on website. Have human being who picks up phone and says "alloo?" when it rings between 9 in the morning and 6 at night.

I swear, if the pyramids could be made "out of order" somehow, Egyptians would work out how to do it. Luckily, it is extremely difficult to break a ten million tonne pile of rocks. Breaking the cornerstone of basic communications is far easier, unfortunately.

I've said for a long time that it is only going to take a little push for gangsta rap culture and Arab culture to fuse in a weird and awesome way. You just need the right photo of 50 Cent chilling in a flowing white robe, or a badass bunch of homeboys sitting on the steps in front of a building smoking shisha in the next Timbalnd video clip.

And lets not even get started on how sweet if would be if Dr Dre talked up how he swaggers around with a falcon on his arm instead of an AK-47.

How to be a proper badass, part 1: Have an Awesome Falcon

Anyhow, I reckon "Arab Money" by Busta Rhymes is getting pretty close to that magical mark. Think it's hard to make "Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al-Saud respects the value of my work" sound smooth? Take it away, Busta:


(lyrics)

A few random points:

- It would be a lot better if he didn't pronounce Arab as Ay-Rab in that retarded American way

- Is it just me or is the pseudo-Arabic chorus not Arabic at all? Sounds more like Hindi

- While the more mass-market gangsta rap and Arab culture are yet to fuse, its fair to say the Islam has been pretty tightly assciated with the more quality hip-hop for quite a while - super awesome Muslim rappers include: A Tribe Called Quest, Afrika Bambatta, Mos Def, Jurassic 5, Lupe Fiasco and Brother Ali, plus hundreds more.

This edition of The UAE: It's Really Weird is sponsored by my iPhone and its surprisingly good camera.

- Be warned: if you mess with the image of Abu Dhabi, these guys will come after you:


- On the entrance to a ludicrously upmarket new neighbourhood in Dubai - so upmarket that it felt more like a giant hotel than a suburb - these friendly notice was posted for all the residents. If this doesn't throw you into dystopian nightmare-future freakouts, nothing will. We will all live like this one day, and this notice will be read to us by a soothing female robotic voice FOREVER:


"HELP US, HELP YOU...

Community living is the cornerstone of a progressive society. However, living together calls for guidelines, which when followed, give direction to achieving the common goal of enjoying our community.

The community rules are for the benefit of owners and residents alike. The Intent is to create a serence, attractive and safe environment for all. Following these rules will enhance and protect the property values and assets of the Community.

Violation of the Community Rules will result in Notices of Violation being issued and may attract financial penalties. "

- And finally, there are moments when the Dubai skyline really makes you stop and take a good long look, I had one of them yesterday evening. On the right are the Emirates Towers, my pick for the best looking buildings in the UAE. On the left is the Burj Dubai, already the world's tallest building and still with a couple of hundred metres more to go:

The week in Cairo was a welcome refresher on the place and people I love - from the humming buzz of a great city celebrating Ramadan:


To the chillaxing that Egypt naturally facilitates:


To quality time with the world's finest people and Cuba's finest cigars:


Full album is here.

"If they want to call the movie `Zack and Miri,' that's fine, but Zack and Miri cannot make a porno on my bus shelters," Cutler said.

Doing some research on a story, part of which involves "solid ink" technology, basically printers that use sticks of solid rather than liquid ink. The ink stick gets slowly melted as the printer uses it.

Anyhow, the whole thing became 50 times more interesting when I read this:

"The sticks are non-toxic and safe to handle. In the mid 1990s, the president of Tektronix actually ate part of a stick of solid ink, demonstrating that they are safe to handle and presumably, eat. The medium of the ink was (at least at the time) made from food-grade processed vegetable oils."

If you truly believe in your product, you should be willing to ingest it. No questions asked.

The new law requiring internet filtering in Australia is as bad as anything done by John Howard's government, and mocks the idea that the new Rudd government is genuinely progressive or visionary:

Australians will be unable to opt-out of the government's pending Internet content filtering scheme, and will instead be placed on a watered-down blacklist, experts say. (Computerworld)

Yes, John Howard had warships tow boats full of refugees to random deserted islands for offshore "processing". But censoring the internet is absolutely fucking disastrous in the long run. Sure, in the beginning it will be some kind of benign cutting of gory death videos and how-to guides to making your own crystal meth - and even censoring this is wrong.

But just watch - the moment a government body makes decisions about what can't be shown on the internet, the government effectively assumes responsibility for everything else online. All of a sudden everything that isn't censored has kind of government stamp of approval. And then every little interest group and whining gang of righteous victims will begin calling for whatever ails them to also get the chop.

Promoting ideas somebody feels is racist? Bye bye. Saying something someone else thinks defames their religion? Gone. Saying anything that shouldn't be said in front of the children - remember, always think of the children - good night.

Combined with the retarded new attitude towards soft drugs in once-tolerant South Australia - also gleefully championed by a so-called progressive Labour government - this makes me seriously wonder if I could ever vote Labour.

My dad used to ride a motorcycle, before I was born, and his big learning from the whole experience was that I was definitely not allowed to get a motorcycle.

I pushed my luck as hard as I hope it will ever be pushed a few months ago; turned a small Japanese car into a twisted lump of metal origami at 150 km/h and somehow walked away without a scratch, so unbelievably unharmed that it is the lack of injury that actaully freaks me out now more than the crash.

But as anyone who has properly destroyed a car will tell you, there is a really clear moment where all possible control over whether you live or die in the coming three seconds leaves your hands. For me, it was a fraction of a second where I tried to swerve, hit the brakes, do something - but realised that I was no longer driving a car but strapped to some kind of blazing comet, its motion and my future completely unrelated to anything I do.

That point, when life is determined by the physical laws of mass and velocity, is absolutely fucking terrifying. But is there something in that moment that sits apart from any other experience in life? 

All of this is a long-winded way to introduce one of the best things Hunter S. Thompson ever wrote, the end of the epilogue to Hells Angels, his best book. After he finished riding with the Angels, he kept the bike, and would sometimes take it out late at night, riding Too Fast and pushing his luck because:

"...with the throttle screwed on, there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right... and that's when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhileration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are the wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it... howling through a turn to the right, then to the left, and down the long hill to Pacifica... letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge... The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others - the living - are those who pushed their luck as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. 

But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions."

My son will not be getting a motorcycle. 

Spacious and airy, the newsroom of the National seems a newfangled journalistic field of dreams, with its stylish furniture, flat-panel monitors and roomy, uncluttered desks.... (LA Times)

The lead may be a bit overwritten, but it is a generally good story about The National and how we are doing. They obviously didn't see my desk when they wrote the "uncluttered" comment...