November 4th, 2009 | brainjuice, music
Too much to do, so I’m bailing out of warrenellis.com for the night. Tomorrow, we go live with SHIVERING SANDS.
I am being played off tonight by NEU! and the phenomenal "Fur Immer." Been dragging out, dusting off and re-playing all my Krautrock since watching a pretty good documentary on those days by the BBC. I shouldn’t call it Krautrock, mind you, they didn’t like that term…
G’night.
WARREN ELLIS
Brian Wood - 20 Nov 09
Will Blanche, ?The Newly Constructed Towers of the World Trade Center Seen From the South Side on West Street, May, 1973? (via These Americans)
See also: Mitch Epstein, ?West Side Highway, New York City? [looking towards World Trade Center] 1977
Kung Fu Monkey - 20 Nov 09
John Robb - 20 Nov 09
Short Answer: divide it.
It's long been my contention that Iraq was stabilized at an acceptable level of controlled chaos due to a happy accident by al Qaeda (in an attempt to expand/lead the loose insurgency in a new direction). What did they do? They blew up the Golden Mosque in Samara in 2006. This act of symbolic terrorism did indeed disrupt social networks as anticipated, however the consequences were ultimately disastrous for the Iraqi open source insurgency.
The reason for this is it broke the dynamics of the open source insurgency in ways the US and Iraqi government's COIN efforts could not. First, it created a permanent split between Sunni and Shiite insurgent groups/militias. Coopetition ended. Second, it motivated large Shiite militias to start an ethnic cleansing of Sunni areas. This put acute pressure on Sunni guerrilla groups who were too small (by design to avoid US counter-pressure) to defend themselves against large militias operating in the open. The result was an opening, very close to the one I described in my 2005 NYTimes OpEd, that allowed the US to convert Sunni guerrilla groups into militias that were not loyal to the central government (in direct contradiction to its COIN manual).
It's a nice example of the dynamics of many to many conflict, social network disruption, and the development open source counterinsurgency.
See this excellent description at the blog, "Musings on Iraq" for more detail on the ethnic cleansing operations. It also includes this money quote: "the majority of the Sunni insurgency gave up and switched sides to align with the Americans rather than face annihilation at the hands of the Shiite militias, Al Qaeda in Iraq, or the United States."
NOTE: it's pretty clear from the above that social network disruption (either through attacks on symbolic targets or blood and guts terrorism) is like playing horseshoes with live hand grenades. It's ultimately a losing strategy for advancing an open source insurgency. Social network disruption is very likely to break standing order 6: don't fork the insurgency.
Girl Farts - 20 Nov 09
John Robb - 20 Nov 09
Some random items of interest:
Jean Snow - 20 Nov 09
Beautiful (and simple) site design featuring the illustrative work of Yorifuji Bunpei. Via Paul Baron.
Jean Snow - 20 Nov 09
Coming up at the Kakitsubata gallery in Nakameguro is the show “Kodai,” running from November 25 until December 6.
jwz - 19 Nov 09
“Cabbage rock”? I could come to enjoy that.
I’m very much digging the whole “Krautrock” vibe the BBC are pushing on us at the moment. My year’s been very much that way inclined - a chance encounter with Damo Suzuki led me to investigate Can in the summer (it’s very good what he does nowadays - basically you can hire him to warble over whatever improvised noise you choose and he makes it sound amazing). Anyhow, that doucumentary you mentioned was ace, as was the Kraftwerk live show……. Neu! are on my “to do” list.
An amazing Krautrock inspired record that very few people know about is by a group from Providence, Rhode Island (well, I think so, anyhow) called Bright. The album is called Full Negative (or) Breaks and was released some years ago by Ba Da Bing Records who’d later have significant success with Beirut (who are not at all Krautrock-y). Pretty stellar stuff. Not quite as poppy as Quickspace, but mining similar territory.
I guess people can always use a primer in Krautrock though as most of those records are unheard. Anytime anyone mentions this, people tend to point to Julian Cope’s book of Krautrock. I haven’t read it, but I understand it’s far better than his book of hairstyles.
If you ‘re into this kind of stuff (and it seems you are) you will find a chaotically breathtaking rendition of NEU!’s “Super” by the Legendary Pink Dots in this homage release:
http://www.discogs.com/Various-A-Homage-To-Neu/release/47216
I couldn’t find it online, but if you can get your hands on it, don’t let it pass by.
Cheers!