Defending Hip Hop: No More

It is amazing the extent to which hip hop is "not defensible" today! I precisely mean hip hop music and rap. The quantity of extremely explicit and sometimes plain weird content is growing at an astonishing rate.
That said, let me reaffirm: Hop Hop is not dead. It lives through the hopes of reverse industrialization of the divine beat. It lives through the words of socially conscious rappers and real artists throughout the world.
For the time being though, I will not attempt to defend it.
Lebounce

Childish Dilemmas: Of horses, Macbooks and acclaim

Since my earliest age, this has intrigued me!
In horse races, when a horse wins, the rider gets the credits.
I always thought that it was fundamentally unfair and unjust (when I was a kid I had less sophisticated words I must admit :p ). I did appreciate that the jockey has a certain level of input and that input was decisive. But to me it seemed like the horse is the one doing the moving and the hardcore breathing is the horse!
Today, when we think of apple products and other fancy electronic apparel, we always reward Steve jobs and the brand name for these silky beautiful apparel. We never think of the Chinese workers in the foxconn factories actually making your macbook. Thousands of Immigrant workers from the countryside, whom sufferings all too often amount to suicide, are in fact making your Ipod. Do you think they should get some of the credit?
Lebounce

Stop stressing racist people!

Most modern societies are said to be post-racial. This statement is absurd! In fact all we need is some more good racism.

Nobody is hanging dead from tress, it is hard to find burning crosses in yards and nobody is called a negro anymore. Nevertheless, statistics continue to show that minorities are lagging at the bottom of the social ladder. I don't like numbers much, but poverty statistics, joblessness and jail population are flagrant showcases: racism was not eradicated. 

If anything, it has undergone plastic surgery! Political correctness just places limitation on racist people. This lack of expression space does not "cleanse" them from hatred. Rather it pushes them to integrate the "mainstream". Thus the public sphere is infected with this "implicit" smarter racism. 

Anti-immigrant platforms and laws pertinent to "the war on drugs" are examples of the political scene being infected with this. Representations of minorities in Hollywood are just another example of this implicit racism.  

Stop stressing racist people! 

Instead we should allow them the freedom to say it like it is. Potentially, we are going to be shocked with the amount of ignorance and hatred that some still hold. Still, we would be able to contemplate our society under the light of truth and with a bit less makeup. 

By allowing them a degree of freedom of expression and not action, racist people will be easier to determine. They will also be less inclined to hide their venom and spread it hidden under layers of euphemisms and deceit. 

Don't hide racism, face it! 

Lebounce

Discourses on freedom 2: looking for the heat.

In the first half of the "Discourses on freedom 1" I have dwelt upon issues regarding the aging
phenomena that democracies are experiencing. Well, you should read that!
When we speak of freedoms, we have a veil of romanticism abstracting real considerations. People are interested into clauses stating that country X has freedom of press and freedom of that encrusted in its constitution. We open the books and laws and search for every phrase that has "right" or "freedom" and then we rejoice and praise whoever wrote that.
Needless to say that is crap! So cut the crap!!!!
In reality, provisions for freedoms have no value whatsoever. They are completely worthless for two main reasons: One that is inherent in them and one relates to their enactment.
Let us first consider the flaw inherent in most clauses granting freedoms and that good stuff: The sheer phrasing of these clauses usually includes provisions to be regulated by further laws. That is to say, they all real as follow:
You can do whatever you want, as long as you don't violate the laws. 
The deceit is such a phrase is despicable. The logical and linguistic organisation of these phrases is flawed. It would be much more sensible to say:
You are not allowed to do whatever you want: do not do the following... 
That leads me to call for a new way to consider the level of freedom a people enjoy: To consider the limitations and the freedoms they are deprived of!
I was part of a conference discussing the drafting of the Tunisian constitution. There was many politicians and writers and people society deems honorable. In other words few cool people and mostly lame old dudes. Most people wanted to avert any mention in the constitution of any limits to freedom of expression. So cliché! There is going to be limits. That is indubitable! All what we should discuss in fact, is how to choose and phrase these limits rather than ignore them.
Just like coldness is the absence of heat, freedom is fundamentally the absence of restrictions.
 So let us not be foolish and let us start working on making our "restrictions" and limitation fewer, efficient and clearer. That is true progressiveness and activism. Freedom seekers and activists have to admit to the realities of the world they are trying to change. There is no need for an idea that is "good in theory" and bad in practice. Instead we should acknowledge that certain limitations have to exist for our societies to function. Then we shall attempt to expose them to the public in order to strip all unnecessary restrictions from any legitimacy!
Lebounce