Category: History

• Dirty Harry Does Diversity.1: Magnum Tucked In Tweed

  One of the weirder phenomena of early 21st century cinema has been the emergence of Clint Eastwood as would-be spokesman for various groups marginalized by the white male power structure his famed ’70’s character Dirty Harry once defended with a famously long phallic symbol.  Million Dollar Baby (2004) concerned itself with issues of gender and…

  jhd123

  February 18, 2015

  Dirty Harry Does Diversity, Film, History, Series of posts, Uncategorized

  ANC, Angela Y. Davis, Berkeley CA, Black Panther Party, Brezhnev, Clint Eastwood, Dirty Harry, Ed Sanders, Films, Gran Torino, Invictus, J. Edgar, J. Hoberman, Jack Kerouac, John Wayne, Magnum Force, Million Dollar Baby, Nelson Mandela, Other John Davises, Pauline Kael, People’s Park Protest, Politics, Race, Reds, Roger Ebert, Ronald Reagan, The Enforcer, The Ex, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Tim Buckley, Too Many Cowboys, Warren Beatty, William F. Buckley

• Top 40 over 40.18: Peter Hughes and Dipa Ma

  I was once listening to an episode of Car Talk on NPR and heard a woman call in to Click and Clack with the following dilemma:  she had a Honda that was running perfectly, and that had proven to be very reliable over the years. Nevertheless, she found the car boring.  She found herself eyeing…

  jhd123

  December 14, 2014

  Buddhism, Disability, History, Mental Health, Music, Politics, The Dharma, Top 40 Over 40, Wisecracks

  american empire, Awakening Truth, Chile, Dipa Ma, Fangio, Feminism, Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton, Juan Manuel Fangio, Music, Peter Hughes, Pinochet, Salvador Allende, Sayadaw U Tejaniya, The Dharma, Top 40 Over 40, Vipassana, Vipassana Hawaii

• Read Robin D.G. Kelley on Ferguson

  This is simply to refer folks to an excellent article about Ferguson by Robin D.G. Kelley I read on the Counterpunch website after it was posted by Imani Perry on Facebook. http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/25/75039/ Please consider a subscription to Counterpunch as well as checking out Kelley’s excellent books. In musical circles, Kelley is most known for his biography…

  jhd123

  November 26, 2014

  Book Reviews, Current Events, History

  american empire, Barack Obama, Black Agenda Report, Bruce Dixon, Counterpunch, Darren Wilson, Eddie Conway, Ferguson, History, Imani Perry, KRS-One, Left media, Mike Brown, Mike Ladd, Race, Robin D.G. Kelley, The Real News Network

• The Residents and the Arctic

  I rarely hear an entire record played on the radio.  A few months ago, I heard the album Eskimo by the Residents played on WXDU’s stellar Sunday afternoon show, Polyphonic Perversity.  I soon purchased it and have really enjoyed hanging out with it since. I know very little about the Residents, so I won’t say…

  jhd123

  October 27, 2014

  Book excerpts, Book Reviews, History, Record Reviews, Work In Progress

  american empire, Arctic Circle, Book Reviews, Coca-Cola, Cora Dubois, Dust to Digital, Ecuador, Edward Said, Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, Eric Lott, Eskimo, Folkways, Harvard University, History, Immanuel Kant, Imperial Eyes, Imperialism, Indigenous Peoples, Inuit, Jadaliyaa, Jay-Z, LA, Left media, Lowland Tribes of Ecuador, Museum of Jurassic Technology, Music, Naomi Klein, Native Instruments, Omar Souleyman, Palestinian Walks, Paul Gilroy, Peabody Museum, Race, Record Reviews, Residents, Sarah Palin, Siam Mapped, Sublime Frequencies, Timbalaand, Upcoming Projects

• Meet the Octopus

  I just uploaded a rough mix of one of the tunes I’m working on for my next record on the page of the Kickstarter I’m running to support it.  You can check it out by clicking here, or on the photo above. It’s called El Pulpo, a handle I got from the book Inevitable Revolutions…

  jhd123

  August 17, 2014

  Crowdfunding, History, Music, Music Files, Politics, Site News, Work In Progress

  american empire, Chiquita, Columbia, El Pulpo, Empire’s Workshop, Food Justice, Greg Grandin, History, Inevitable Revolutions, Kickstarter, Music, United Fruit Company, Upcoming Projects, Walter Lafeber

• Sunday Paper with the BPF: Ahhh, Mindfulness

  Well, I don’t really read a Sunday newspaper anymore.  Either they’ve been driven out of business by the internet or intellectually eviscerated by corporate centralized ownership.  But I’ve been kicking back and checking out some posts on the Buddhist Peace Fellowship (BPF) website after renewing my membership today.  Among them was a piece with a…

  jhd123

  June 29, 2014

  Anti-Neoliberalism, Book excerpts, Buddhism, Economics, History, Politics, The Dharma

  Afghanistan, Alfred McCoy, american empire, Buddhism, Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Burma, Capitalism, chalmers johnson, Devo, Doug Henwood, Drug Policy, Economics, Eric Schmidt, Feminism, Google, IMF, Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Karl Marx, KRS-One, Laos, Neoliberalism, NPR, Peter Dale Scott, Professor Elizabeth Stanley, Race, Ronald Purser, Silicon Valley, Thailand, The Dharma, The Stone House, Time magazine, Vipassana Hawaii, Washington Consensus, Whip It, Wired magazine

• World on a Wire

  As I keep track of the unfolding struggle over the FCC’s proposed creation of a corporate “fast lane” on the internet that would regulate non-corporate media to second class status online, I’m reminded of the film World on a Wire by Rainer Fassbinder, which I watched on DVD a couple of months ago.  Despite being…

  jhd123

  May 24, 2014

  Anti-Neoliberalism, Film, History, Politics, Uncategorized

  Amanda Hess, Astrid Taylor, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Capitalism, Democracy Now, Digital vs. Analog, Feminism, Films, Gravity’s Rainbow, History, Jesse Jackson, Jessica Gonzalez, National Hispanic Media Coalition, Neoliberalism, Politics, Poor Democracy, profit margins, Race, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Rich Media, Robert McChesney, The Real News Network, Thomas Pynchon, World on a Wire

• Reckoning with early REM

  Recently I’ve been working on two projects at the same time, Gnawing on the Bone and Soy Aqui.  I usually don’t do this but have found that there is an upside to it that reminds me of the story behind the REM song Life and How to Live It.  The song is about a resident…

  jhd123

  February 16, 2014

  History, Music, Politics, Record Reviews, Work In Progress

  Byron Coley, Douglas Blackmon, E.H. Harriman, Elizabeth Sturger Llerena, Eric Lott, Gnawing on the Bone, Life and How to Live It, Love and Theft, Michael Stipe, Neil Young, Race, Reconstruction, REM, Slavery By Another Name, Southern Man, Southern Pacific, Soy Aqui, the South, The Wild Bunch, Traces of the Trade, Upcoming Projects

• Are you ready for some futbol? History and the World Cup

  During the recently concluded qualifying rounds for next summer’s 2014 World Cup, I was reminded of Paraguay’s run at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.  So much hope for a more equitable world seemed to mis/dis-placed onto the upsets Ghana and Paraguay scored to advance to the quarterfinals of that event. The tournament ultimately…

  jhd123

  November 24, 2013

  Anti-Neoliberalism, Book excerpts, Book Reviews, History, Sports, Uncategorized

  a, Argentina, Bank of London, Barack Obama, Brazil, Eduardo Galeano, Football in Sun and Shadow, Futbol, Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia, Ghana, Huey Long, Hugo Chavez, Netherlands, Open Veins of Latin America, Paraguay, Spain, Standard Oil, War of the Triple Alliance, World Cup

• Top 40 Over 40.13: Weird Al’s “Party In the CIA”

  I can think of few more unlikely candidates for creative growth after 40 than Weird Al Yankovic.  Back when I was in grade school, he came on the pop culture radar with “Eat It,” his parody of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.”  His string of similar Dr. Demento style hits willfully sucked all of the sexual…

  jhd123

  September 14, 2013

  Anti-Neoliberalism, Economics, Film, History, Music, Politics, Series of posts, Top 40 Over 40, Uncategorized

  Alias, american empire, Angelina Jolie, Argo, Barack Obama, Ben Affleck, Brad Pitt, Capitalism, CIA, Donald S. Lopez, Films, History, Imperialism, Iran, Jennifer Garner, John Limbert, Juan Cole, Lockheed Martin, Michael Moore, Miley Cyrus, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Muhammed Sahimi, Party in the USA, Politics, Prisoners of Shangri La, profit margins, Record Reviews, Richard Gere, Saviors and Survivors, Sudan, TIbet, Top 40 Over 40, Weird Al Yankovic, William Hartung