Bloc personal de l'Āryaprabha,
Dharmachari. :-) Historiador de l'art. Cantaire. :-P Curiòs. Survivor. Mexicà. :-)
My personal world explained in three languages.
Lo dice David Guetta, culpable de que la música comercial de 2010 se ciñera a la pista de baile. Más Maxima FM, menos 40 Principales.
David Guetta lo vaticinó en 2009. "El dance es el nuevo hip-hop", afirmaba en estas mismas páginas. Su disco One love, combinado con su colaboración con Black Eyed Peas, el megaéxito I gotta feeling, y con la eclosión de Lady Gaga, fue un cóctel explosivo de virus que infectaron de manera irremediable el estándar mainstream de principios de siglo. Fueron el propio Guetta y will.i.am, líder de Black Eyed Peas, los que mantuvieron el pulso hasta acabar imponiéndose con sus producciones para Kelis, Usher o Flo Rida.
En 2010, los ritmos sincopados y las colaboraciones de raperos fueron retirándose de las listas discretamente y con el rabo entre las piernas ante la llegada del abusón y populista cuatro por cuatro, los colchones de teclados de influencia trance y el muro de sonido discotequero. Los singles se confundieron con sus remezclas, y dejó de haber diferencias apreciables entre las listas de éxitos de EE UU y Reino Unido con respecto a las del norte y este de Europa, históricamente más entregadas a la fiesta y el cachondeo veraniego.
El fenómeno podría resumirse con una sola canción: Only girl (in the world), el bombazo de Rihanna. Tras un comienzo disco de tintes clásicos, el tema explota con un magnífico estribillo maximalista en el que Rihanna abre su corazón voz en grito, desde el centro de la pista y mirando a la cabina del pinchadiscos. Sus productores, los noruegos Stargate, cuya discografía incluye clásicos del pop negro reciente como Unfaithful, de la propia Rihanna; Irreplaceable, de Beyoncé, o Closer, de Ne-Yo, son uno de los mejores ejemplos para comprobar la adopción paulatina de estos poco sofisticados parámetros por parte del pop masivo.
Algunos productores estrella de la década pasada como Timbaland y Danja, hasta hace muy poco los reyes del estudio de grabación, se han quedado fuera de la tendencia por distintas razones, a costa de haber perdido casi todo su peso en la industria. Otros como Stargate, Benny Blanco o Dr. Luke han adaptado sus acabados a la nueva sensibilidad. Revisando la lista de las canciones más vendidas y radiadas del año según Billboard se encuentran infinidad de ejemplos de este proceso. Dynamite, de Taio Cruz; OMG, de Usher; Club can't handle me, de Flo Rida; I like it, de Enrique Iglesias, e incluso California Gurls, de Katy Perry, y Tik Tok, de Ke$ha, comparten una estética, para entendernos, más propia de Maxima FM o la catalana Flaix FM que de los 40 Principales, y habrían podido ser confundidas por música de baile de origen europeo hasta hace bien poco.
Proclamar la muerte del r'n'b como lo conocemos desde la explosión de artistas como Aaliyah, Brandy o Destiny's Child sería una exageración. B.O.B. o Drake han triunfado este año en mayor o menor medida con discos más respetuosos con esta tradición, y los ya conocidos The-Dream y Ciara han publicado grandes álbumes para el género. Pero de momento se encuentra arrinconado por la alargada sombra de David Guetta y su sempiterna sonrisa. Nadie más que él podría haberse imaginado algo así.
The Iraqi concerns, analysed in a dispatch sent from the US embassy in Baghdad by then ambassador Christopher Hill in September 2009, represent a fundamental divergence from the American and British view of Iran as arch-predator in Iraq.
"Iraq views relations with Saudi Arabia as among its most challenging given Riyadh's money, deeply ingrained anti-Shia attitudes and [Saudi] suspicions that a Shia-led Iraq will inevitably further Iranian regional influence," Hill writes.
"Iraqi contacts assess that the Saudi goal (and that of most other Sunni Arab states, to varying degrees) is to enhance Sunni influence, dilute Shia dominance and promote the formation of a weak and fractured Iraqi government."
Hill's unexpected assessment flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that Iranian activities, overt and covert, are the biggest obstacle to Iraq's development.
It feeds claims, prevalent after the 9/11 attacks, that religiously conservative, politically repressive Saudi Arabia, where most of the 9/11 terrorists came from, is the true enemy of the west.
Hill's analysis has sharp contemporary relevance as rival Shia and Sunni political blocs, backed by Iran and the Saudis respectively, continue to squabble over the formation of a new government in Baghdad, seven months after March's inconclusive national elections.
Hill says Iraqi leaders are careful to avoid harsh criticism of Saudi Arabia's role for fear of offending the Americans, Riyadh's close allies. But resentments simmer below the surface.
"Iraqi officials note that periodic anti-Shia outbursts from Saudi religious figures are often allowed to circulate without sanction or disavowal from the Saudi leadership. This reality reinforces the Iraqi view that the Saudi state religion of Wahhabi Sunni Islam condones religious incitement against Shia."
Hill reports the Saudis have used considerable financial and media resources to support Sunni political aspirations, exert influence over Sunni tribal groups, and undercut the Shia Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) and Iraqi National Alliance.
Hill adds that some Iraqi observers see Saudi aims as positively malign. "A recent Iraqi press article quoted anonymous Iraqi intelligence sources assessing that Saudi Arabia was leading a Gulf effort to destabilise the Maliki government and was financing 'the current al-Qaida offensive in Iraq'."
Hill and his Iraqi interlocutors are not alone in their suspicions of Saudi policy. At a meeting in Ankara in February this year a senior Turkish foreign ministry official, Feridun Sinirlioglu, told an American envoy that "Saudi Arabia is 'throwing around money' among the political parties in Iraq because it is unwilling to accept the inevitability of Shia dominance there".
Returning to more familiar ground, Hill asserts that Iranian efforts in Iraq are also "driven by a clear determination to see a sectarian, Shia-dominated government that is weak, disenfranchised from its Arab neighbours, detached from the US security apparatus and strategically dependent on Iran". Such an outcome is not in the interests of the US, he notes drily.
But he passes on to Washington the arguments of Iraqi officials who say they know how to "manage" Iran. "Shia contacts ... do not dismiss the significant Iranian influence but argue that it is best countered by Iraqi Shia politicians who know how to deal with Iran." These officials also maintain Iranian interference "is not aimed, unlike that of some Sunni neighbours, at fomenting terrorism that would destabilise the government". They predict Tehran's meddling will "naturally create nationalistic Iraqi resistance to it, both Shia and more broadly, if others do not intervene".
The difficulties encountered by Iranian-backed Shia parties in coming together to form a new government, despite much urging from Tehran and the co-opting of the hardline Iran-based cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, could be seen as evidence that Iran's overall influence has been exaggerated and that public "resistance" to Iran's role is indeed growing.
All the same, American officials continue to blame Iran principally for instigating and fomenting much of the sectarian and insurgent violence that has disfigured Iraq since the 2003 invasion. James Jeffrey, Hill's successor as US ambassador, claimed in August that about one-quarter of all US casualties in Iraq were caused by armed groups backed by Iran.
A Baghdad embassy cable from November 2009 says Iran continues to view Iraq as "a vital foreign policy priority for the Iranian government's efforts to project its ideology and influence in the region". At the head of this effort, it says, is the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps-Qods (Jerusalem) Force, or IRGC-QF, led by Brigadier-General Qasem Soleimani, whose authority is "second only to supreme leader [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei".
Soleimani has close ties with prominent Iraqi government officials, including the president, Jalal Talibani, and prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, the cable reports. "Khamenei, President [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad, Speaker [Ali] Larijani and former president [Ayatollah Akhbar Hashemi] Rafsanjani consult regularly with visiting GOI [government of Iraq] officials as part of the IRIG's [Islamic Republic of Iran government] broader 'strategic' council of advisers seeking to influence the GOI."
The cable continues that Iran's tools of influence include financial support to and pressure on a cross-spectrum of Iraqi parties and officials; economic development assistance, notably to religious organisations; lethal aid to selected militant Shia proxies; and sanctuary to Iraqi figures fearful of US government targeting, or those seeking to revitalise their political-religious credentials, most notably Moqtada al-Sadr.
"This leverage also extends, to a lesser extent, to select Sunni actors, including such public figures as Iraqi speaker [Iyad al-] Samarra'i, whose September visit to Tehran included meetings with several senior IRIG officials."
The cable comments that Iran is watching the US troop withdrawal schedule closely as it tries to make permanent its "strategic foothold". All US troops are expected to leave Iraq by the end of next year. But the cable's American author also injects some welcome historical perspective.
"Iran will continue to flex its muscles to ensure its strategic outcomes are met. This should not lead to alarmist tendencies or reactions on our part. The next Iraqi government will continue to cultivate close ties with Iran, given longstanding historical realities that precede Iraq's ties with the United States.
"On the other hand Iran's influence should not be overestimated. As the GOI continues to gain its footing, points of divergence between Tehran and Baghdad become increasingly evident on such sensitive bilateral issue as water, hydrocarbons, maritime borders and political parity. Some prominent Iraqi leaders, including those with ties to Iran, are increasingly sensitive to being labelled Iranian lackeys."
A visit last December by US diplomats to the Iraqi holy city of Najaf, the "epicentre of Shia Islam", finds further evidence of Iraqi public resentment of foreign meddling from whatever quarter. One local leader "singled out Saudi Arabia and Iran as the biggest culprits but noted that a 'mental revolution' was under way among Iraqi youth against foreign agendas seeking to undermine the country's stability".
Iraqi sources also tell the visiting Americans that the Iranian government and the IRGC cannot match the "social and political clout" that Iraq's Shia establishment, led by the Shia world's most senior cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, wields among the ordinary citizens of both Iraq and Iran.
Sistani, it is noted, rejects the fundamental tenet of Iranian clerical rule – the unchallengeable "custodianship of the jurist" adopted by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to justify his de facto dictatorship. Seen this way the entire Iranian Islamic revolution is illegitimate.
Carmel blaze is not the only thing burning Israel from the inside
Israel needs a revolutionary consolidation of its democratic foundations, in a fashion that causes the transformation of regional fears to genuine regional peace that can enable life impervious to fascism and fire.
By Sefi Rachlevsky
The raging fire exposes the truth: Israel has no infrastructures. Despite its status as a rich country, it lacks basic physical infrastructure such as fire-fighting services because its leadership burns state money in corruption, settlements and financing of extremist yeshivas; and despite its history, Israel lacks democratic infrastructures because its brambly leadership is too busy lighting fires.
In Israel, 53 percent of the Jewish majority now wants the government to encourage the emigration of Israeli Arabs. It's worth looking at that again: An absolute majority of those defined as Jews in Israel want government action to bring about "ethnic cleansing" in the state. A third reading of this finding will aggravate the chill that should run down the spine of Israel's democracy. Twenty years after Kahanism was deemed illegal, 65 years after the racist tragedy in the heart of Europe, most Jewish hearts in Israel pulsate in sync: Kahane was right!
What the eyes see is thus no accident: not by chance is Safed's rabbi remaining at his post; nor is it happenstance that 55 MKs hold blatantly racist views and another 15 parliamentarians assist them in the obtainment of an absolute majority; nor is it an accident that a declared Kahanist plays his flute and leads the entire Knesset on a wave of racist legislation.
Understanding of the historical context worsens the spine chill. A week ago, right before the release of the Wikileaks information, Benjamin Netanyahu looked into his crystal ball, and sketched his updated vision for the eastern Negev as a penal facility and work camp for refugees who are not of the "correct" ethnic origin. Someone looking at this beholder could see a bright smile larger than the grin on the face of the Cheshire cat lapping up a tub of milk. Netanyahu's victorious smile may not only reveal the identity of the possible source but also revealed to the naive his perception of his three-part victory: the weakening of the "danger" posed by effective American involvement for the obtainment of peace; weakening of the region's pragmatic regimes, whose exposure as collaborators lessens their ability to forge a peace accord; and lower barriers toward an American "yellow light" en route to Iran. For leaders of the whole region appeared to light up Israel in green, as though to say, "Bomb, Bibi, bomb!"
But we are not dealing with a mythical figure who sees but is not seen: Israel is a visible, central part of the map, and it is vulnerable to fire. Dramatic changes in relations between the superpowers tend to create revolutionary opportunities, alongside the possibility of the rise of racist fascism. This is a time when existential anxieties mingle with sensations of power, while there is an aspiration to exploit global changes to sever the chains of the past, and of the old, "repressive" morality to carry out "liberating" revenge. This is akin to the context of events that transpired in Europe from the second decade of the last century.
Wikileaks exposed, and thereby accelerated, opportunities laden within structural changes in the superpowers. The decline in American hegemony, which is intertwined with the rise of China, helps the advance of secondary powers connected to this rising superpower, such as Iran and Turkey, and also cultivates new-old dreams of hegemony mingled with revenge impulses harbored by those who see themselves as having been humiliated. These huge strategic shifts yield a dramatic junction. From Israel's standpoint, what is needed at this turning point is a revolutionary consolidation of its democratic foundations, in a fashion that causes the transformation of regional fears to genuine regional peace that can enable life impervious to fascism and fire, of all sorts. However, such a junction also encourages choosing lebensraum for a Jewish-racist world. A world which is likely to happily bring about apocalyptic clashes in the east, collisions featuring the fascist powers that are on the rise there. Another shiver that could run down the spine in the future joins the historical spine chill which occurs when the thronging majority's voice is heard saying "Kahane was right." This is the trembling that happens when one sees a column of black smoke approaching.
Entrades
